Turkish Miner Hires JPMorgan to Raise $250 Million From Sukuk

(Bloomberg) -- Turkey’s Eti Krom AS hired JPMorgan Chase & Co. to raise $250 million from its first sale of dollar-denominated Islamic bonds.

The ferro-chrome producer, based in the city of Maslak near Istanbul, will use the money from the five-year securities for capital expenditure and other working expenses, Chief Financial Officer Evren Ozturk said in an interview. The sale of the high-yielding bonds is expected later this year, he said.

"We want to boost our financial credibility in the Middle East,” Ozturk said. “That’s why we will issue sukuk instead of conventional finance.”

Eti Krom’s offering will follow that of Turkey’s government, which in February raised $2 billion from a sale of Islamic bonds that was about three times oversubscribed. The three-year sukuk was priced to yield 5.8%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Global sales of international Islamic bonds have climbed 38% this year to $15.8 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

To contact the reporters on this story: Arif Sharif in Dubai at asharif2@bloomberg.net;Archana Narayanan in Dubai at anarayanan16@bloomberg.net;Kerim Karakaya in Istanbul at kkarakaya2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Dana El Baltaji at delbaltaji@bloomberg.net, Shaji Mathew

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