Turkish billionaire Ferit Sahenk has approached the Qatar Investment Authority to gauge the wealth fund’s interest in potentially buying a cruise port and shopping mall project in the heart of Istanbul, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The project Galataport was financed partly with a €1.02 billion ($1.1 billion) loan and Sahenk plans to use any proceeds from a potential sale to repay that debt, said the people, who declined to be identified as the talks are private. Talks are at an early stage and a deal may not eventually materialize, they said.
The $1.7 billion cruise port project, built by Sahenk’s Dogus Group and smaller partner Bilgili Holding under a 30-year government contract, was beset with delays and opened in 2021. The port, on the Bosphorus, has a 1.2 kilometer coastline and is projected to average 25 million visitors and 1.5 million passengers a year.
Shares in Dogus REIT, a subsidiary of Sahenk’s holding company, rose as much as 8.6% in Istanbul.
Representatives for Dogus and Bilgili weren’t available for comment. The QIA declined to comment.
Sahenk, once Turkey’s richest man, spent heavily on hotels, marinas and restaurants after selling his stake in Turkiye Garanti Bankasi AS to Spain’s BBVA for about $5 billion.
For the past few years, his firm Dogus has been trying to raise cash and deliver on pledges it made to banks as part of a debt restructuring. In 2020, the company agreed to sell a 30% stake in a high-end Istanbul shopping center to an arm of the QIA.
Source: bloomberg