Please let Mr. Ciliv relax

Turkcell is known as the crown jewel of the Turkish ICT industry. It is very profitable and it disseminates technology to every corner of the country far better than its rivals.

Financially speaking, Turkcell Group delivered a solid performance in 2013.

However maybe it is because there is a lot of money to be made or maybe because the owners of the company made bad investment decisions in the early stages, for year’s disputes between the owners of Turkcell still rages on. Three companies are fighting over the ownership of disputed shares that the Çukurova Group sold both to Telia Sonera and to the Russian Alfa Group. Recently with the decisions taken in the United Kingdom’s Privy Council there is an opportunity for the Çukurova to pay the money and take back its shares. The effect of the Board’s decision on these issues is that the sum to be paid by Çukurova to regain its interest in Turkcell is over $1 billion lower than contended by the Alfa Group before the Board. So it was a good decision for Çukurova.

Therefore Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, the owner of Çukurova, began looking for cash to regain shares and found relief in Ülker. Ülker is Turkey’s biggest Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company with a revenue of more than $8 billion dollars per year. They are notoriously known for their ability to push new products into the market faster than any other competitor as they have the most sophisticated logistics network in the country, and one of the better ones in the world. It made a lot of sense to me to hear that Ülker will be backing Çukurova for the disputed shares as Ülker can actually help Turkcell grow, with the help of their business management and logistics know how. It would be an...