Alfa Telecom offers $2.8bn to buy back Turkcell stake

Russia’s Alfa Telecom has offered $2.8bn  to buy back the 13.76 % in Turkcell that it only sold  last year. Turkcell is Turkey’s leading mobile operator and has been the subject of an ownership struggle between Alfa Telecom and prominent  Turkish businessman Mehmet Emin Karamehmet’ s Çukurova Holding  industrial conglomerate for the past seven years. In 2014, Çukurova paid Alfa Telecom $1.6 billion for the stake that the Russian company is now trying to buy back, and financed the offer through a loan from  Ziraat Bankasi. In a statement issued earlier this week AlfaTelecom – which already owns 13. 22% stake in Turkcell through its shares in Turkcell Holding –  said  that it had offered $54.9m per share for 51 of Turkcell’s class-B shares. 

Source: todayszaman