NEW YORK-Turkcell, the largest Global System for Mobile Communications operator in Turkey, said June 8 it has asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to go public later this year in the United States.
“We have just applied for an [initial public offering] to the [SEC] in the United States,” Oksan Atilla, a Turkcell spokeswoman, told Reuters.
“Approximately at the end of this year, we will have some kind of IPO.”
However, as of June 8, the IPO registration had not been posted on the SEC’s Web site.
Turkcell, which has about 400,000 subscribers, is owned 45.9 percent by Cukurova Holding, a Turkish family-owned company, and 41 percent by telecommunications carrier Sonera of Finland.
Jyrki Karasvirta told Reuters that Sonera would not be opposed to Turkcell selling shares to investors this year, but declined to comment on whether an offering or stock exchange listing were being planned.
