Godiva's Owner in Talks With Turkish Banks to Restructure Loans
Godiva Owner in Talks With Turkish Banks to Reorganize Loans
(Bloomberg) -- Global sweets company Yildiz Holding AS, owned by Turkey’s richest man Murat Ulker, is in talks with banks to consolidate its loans in its home country and refinance them to help maintain the company’s growth path, it said in a statement on Friday.
Yildiz Holding met with its lenders following preliminary 2017 earnings and 2018 projections, it said in an emailed statement after Bloomberg reported that the company was seeking to restructure its debt to 10 banks. The lenders, led by Yapi & Kredi Bankasi AS, a unit of Turkey’s Koc Holding AS and Italy’s UniCredit SpA, offered to consolidate Yildiz’s separate loans and refinance them through a new syndicated loan, it said.
Yildiz is one of Turkey’s largest companies and has been on a global buying spree over the past decade or so, snapping up assets including Belgium’s Godiva Chocolates, the U.K.’s United Biscuits Holdings Plc and DeMet’s Candy Co. of the U.S. The loans it’s seeking to restructure include debt it took on for the $3.1 billion purchase of United Biscuits in 2014, according to people familiar with the negotiations, who asked not to be named because the talks are private.
Shares Slump
Yildiz Holding is pushing an expansion abroad on what it says are growth opportunities in the Middle East, North America, Africa and Asia. After a July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, the company came under repeated fire in pro-government newspaper reports, which implied that it was involved in financing businesses connected to the coup. Those claims were rejected by its chairman, Ulker.
Ulker Biskuvi Sanayi AS, the group’s largest listed unit in Turkey, slumped as much as 3.4 percent to 21.96 liras per share as of 10:20 a.m. in Istanbul. Gozde Girisim Sermayesi Yatirim Ortakligi AS, Yildiz’s private-equity unit, dropped as much as 5 percent to 5.11 liras, its lowest this year.
Ulker reported $1.2 billion in outstanding debt in its latest filing, in the third quarter of 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Yildiz has requested that the banks extend maturities on its loans and offer it a three-year grace period before payments begin, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter.
To contact the reporters on this story: Kerim Karakaya in Istanbul at kkarakaya2@bloomberg.net, Asli Kandemir in Istanbul at akandemir@bloomberg.net, Ercan Ersoy in Istanbul at eersoy@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stefania Bianchi at sbianchi10@bloomberg.net, Benjamin Harvey, Vernon Wessels
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