In spite of the fact that Turkish capital markets offer a wide range of opportunities for companies such as low-cost financing, institutionalization, domestic and international recognition, providing liquidity to shareholders, and credibility, some major Turkish companies have not yet had recourse to this important facility and are not traded on the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE). With this in mind, the ISE initiated an “Initial Public Offering Campaign” in 2008, with the protocol signed with the Capital Markets Board of Turkey (CMB), the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey, and the Association of Capital Market Intermediary Institutions of Turkey, in order to encourage companies to benefit from the opportunities offered by the capital markets, to facilitate access to the funds they need for growth, to ensure the sustainability of particularly family businesses through public offering, and to contribute to the growth of the Turkish capital markets and Turkey as a whole.
The common purpose of the four signatories of the Initial Public Offering Campaign is to uncover the main reasons behind the failure of companies to have recourse to the capital markets, which play a key role in converting savings into investments, to eliminate any hurdles to public offering, to prepare publications and organize meetings that will create awareness about the opportunities offered by the capital markets, and to organize events and similar activities bringing together the supply and demand sides of funds as well as intermediary institutions; in short, to serve the economic development of Turkey.
Within the framework of these activities, Initial Public Offering Campaign: Istanbul Summit will be held at Haliç Congress Center in Istanbul, on May 6-7, 2010.
The Summit will bring together intermediary institutions offering services in public offerings, independent audit companies, legal consultants, domestic and international private equity funds intending to take advantage of the investment opportunities in Turkey, various institutional investors and sectoral associations, who will have the opportunity to directly promote their services to the top executives of companies with an IPO potential, through opening stands and organizing workshops.
The Summit will be an excellent platform for the representatives of the participating companies to hold one-to-one meetings with the officials of the companies active or investing in initial public offerings, while receiving detailed information and documents from the stands and participating in the workshops where the opportunities offered by the capital markets will be deliberated upon.
We do hope that Initial Public Offering Campaign: Istanbul Summit will be a successful organization in terms of promoting the opportunities offered by the capital markets, and also a milestone in making Istanbul a regional and global financial center. Our target for 2023, when we will be celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Turkish Republic, is 1,000 traded companies, companies to gain competitive edge on the international platform, and to become global.
Let us all support this process called “Initial Public Offering Campaign”.
Let us grow our companies, grow our capital markets, and grow Turkey.
See you at the Initial Public Offering Campaign: Bursa Summit.
Sincerely,
Hüseyin ERKAN
Istanbul Stock Exchange
Chairman & CEO