Turkish IPOs in Istanbul and London – Key Issues for Market Participants

The Turkish IPO market has experienced a significant uptick in activity over the past year, indicating that the IPO outlook for Turkish businesses is significantly improving.

This follows the London Stock Exchange listings of Global Ports Holding plc and DP Eurasia N.V. (the master franchisee of Domino’s Pizza in Turkey and Russia), as well as the Borsa Istanbul listing of Mavi Giyim Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (Mavi Jeans), both of which closed in May–June 2017. There are also reports of more than 10 companies actively planning to go public in 2018–2019 as part of this growing trend, most recently following the Q1 2018 IPOs of Medical Park, Turkey’s largest private hospital chain, and Enerjisa Enerji, one of the country’s leading energy companies.

This memorandum outlines certain of the key international and Turkish legal considerations arising in such transactions. It considers each step in the transaction timeline, focusing specifically on IPOs involving a Borsa Istanbul listing in the context of a global equity offering, and also compares these to the equivalent requirements for an IPO and listing of a Turkish business on the London Stock Exchange.