Turkey's official privatization administration has announced that five investors purchased bidding documents and 10 signed confidentiality agreements concerning the privatization of Turk Telekom. Furthermore, the administration reported, nine investors have obtained confidentiality agreements, of whom four purchased bidding documents for Turkish Airlines.
As reported by the Turkish Daily News, the privatization of the two state-owned companies are a key condition of the government's deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), according to which the IMF helped bail it out of the recent foreign currency crisis.
Turkey opened tenders on December 14 to sell a 33.5 percent stake in Turk Telekom and a 51 percent in Turkish Airlines to strategic investors. The deadline for the submission of bids is February 28 for Turk Telekom and May 14 for Turkish Airlines.
Deutsche Telekom is considered to be the primary candidate for the Turk Telekom tender and a meeting that took place in Bonn last week between representatives of the privatization administration said and the German telecommunications company was said to have been positive. The privatization authority denied reports that it was also talking to British Telecom.
SwissAir had expressed interest in acquiring the stake in the Turkish Airlines sell-off, but on January 29 the company sent a letter to the privatization administration informing it of its withdrawal. – (Albawaba-MEBG)
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
