Spanish bank BBVA, which owns 49.85 percent of leading Turkish listed bank BBVA Garanti, offered to buy the remaining shares in the company traded on the Istanbul Stock Exchange.
BBVA will buy the stock at 12.2 liras apiece, it said in a statement published by the exchange on Monday. The shares surged 9.9 percent to 11.6 liras, reaching their upper trading limit for the session.
The 50.15 percent stake is worth 2.25 billion euros ($2.6 billion) at the offer price, BBVA said. The company said that the sale of the shares by investors would be voluntary and that they would be purchased from its own resources.
BBVA is doubling down on its commitment to Garanti despite sharp losses for the Turkish lira, which have diluted the value of its stake. The offer also comes after several other foreign financial institutions exited Turkey or said they were considering doing so.
BBVA has paid $5.8 billion and $2.76 billion euros for its minority stake in Garanti in purchases made since 2010, citing Turkey as one of the emerging markets with the highest growth potential. The lira traded as weak as 10.05 per dollar on Monday compared with about 3 per dollar five years ago.
The Spanish bank acquired an initial 24.9 percent in Garanti in 2010 from General Electric Co. and Turkey’s Doguş Holding for $5.8 billion. It bought an additional 14.89 percent stake from Doguş in 2015 for about 1.9 billion euros. It paid 859 million euros for Dogus’s remaining 9.95 percent stake in a deal that closed in May 2018.
Last week, Italy’s UniCredit said it would sell its remaining 18 percent share iof Yapı Kredi bank, Turkey’s leading provider of credit card loans, for 0.3 billion euros to local partner Koç Holding. UniCredit is following U.S. banking giant Citigroup and top British insurer Aviva in exiting stakes in major Turkish financial companies. HSBC is also seeking to depart Turkey if it can find a local buyer, Reuters reported early last year.
Ahval