Turkish bank's loan receives strong interest from Gulf lenders

17 March 2010

Bank Asya may increase $75m loan

Turkey’s Bank Asya may increase the size of a $75m loan deal after a strong response from lenders left the deal oversubscribed.

Sources close to the deal say the loan is already oversubscribed despite the deadline for bank responses not occurring until late March. The deal, which is being arranged by Bahrain’s Arab Banking Corporation, Dubai’s Noor Islamic Bank and the UK’s Standard Chartered, is scheduled to close in early April.

“We have seen significant interest in this transaction, with a lot of money coming from Gulf banks,” says a banker working on the deal.

The final size of the transaction is not yet determined because of the over-subscription.

The loan will have a tenor of one-year, and is priced at 2.25 per cent, with fees of 1.15 per cent. Banks will be invited to contribute either in dollars or euros to the deal. Bank Asya began seeking funding for the $75m loan in February.

Bank Asya is the largest Islamic bank in Turkey. The deal is structured as a currency murabaha, which means a bank buys a currency for a client, which then buys it back from the bank at a predetermined profit rate.

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