Turkey Wealth Fund to Retry Bond Sale as It Plans IPO of Assets - Bloomberg

Turkey Wealth Fund to Retry Bond Sale as It Plans IPO of Assets - Bloomberg

Turkey’s sovereign wealth fund will retry a Eurobond issuance next year after its debut was shelved two months ago due to weak investor demand, and is also considering selling shares in some of its assets.

The institution is weighing an initial public offering of stock-exchange operator Borsa Istanbul AS within the next two years, Chief Executive Officer Zafer Sonmez said in an interview with BloombergHT TV. The fund on Monday sold a 10% stake in the bourse to Qatar Investment Authority for $200 million.

The fund wants to become a regular issuer in international debt markets with Eurobond sales every “18 to 24 months,” he said. While it is slightly more expensive for wealth funds to borrow internationally compared with sovereign debt sales, the fund can also rely on dividends from the companies it owns and proceeds from asset sales to fund its operations.

The fund, set up in 2016 to invest in new businesses and back state-owned firms, wants to help further stoke growth in an economy that outpaced peers in the third quarter. Sonmez sees the fund contributing toward an entrepreneurial state, a term borrowed from economist Mariana Mazzucato, who argues that governments are often the force behind transformative innovation.