IslamicFinance.de

Bahraini lender Al Baraka Bank's Turkish unit Albaraka Turk has secured an Islamic murabaha syndicated loan of $196 million and 175.5 million euros ($237 million). The loan, in one- and two-year tranches, had a cost of LIBOR/EURIBOR +1 percent and LIBOR/EURIBOR +1.35 percent respectively.

Bahraini lender Al Baraka Bank's Turkish unit plans to issue more than $200 million of sukuk, in the last quarter of this year or early 2014, according to executive vice president Ayhan Keser. Keser said the timing would depend on market conditions and the maturity of the sukuk was likely to be 5 years.

Bahraini lender Al Baraka Bank's Turkish unit is working on the issue of a $200 million sukuk, Al Baraka Turk general manager Fahrettin Yahsi said on Wednesday. Yahsi explained the sukuk would be issued when market conditions allowed and added that the bank would renew its $450 million murabaha syndication with a higher volume at the end of September.

Bahraini lender Al Baraka Bank's Turkish unit plans to issue a $200 million, 10-year subordinated sukuk by the end of April or early May, the Bahraini bank's chief executive Adnan Ahmed Yousif said yesterday. Al Baraka Turk, which signed a $450m murabaha loan in September, has appointed BNP Paribas, Al Hilal Bank, Barwa Bank, Emirates NBD and Japan's Nomura for the Tier 2 sukuk.

Al Baraka Turk, a unit of Bahraini lender Al Baraka, said on Wednesday it had started work on establishing a joint private pension company with Kuveyt Turk. The bank made the statement to Istanbul Stock Exchange. Turkish lender Kuveyt Turk is 62 percent owned by Kuwait Finance House.

Strong investor demand and a need to improve capital adequacy ratios are causing Turkey's Islamic banks to consider issuing subordinated sukuk. Ibrahim Oguducu, head of the financial institutions business at Bank Asya, said longer-tenor subordinated sukuk would help balance mismatches between the maturities of banks' liabilities and assets, while diversifying their funding sources. Subordinated issues might not be expensive for Turkey's Islamic banks that have issued only two sukuk so far.