Through its syndicated loan renewal, Akbank has provided US $700 million in support of the Turkish economy. The loan has 367-days maturity with an all-in cost of Libor+2,15% and Euribor+1,75%. 36 banks from 20 countries participated in this successful loan renewal, which included the addition of sustainability performance criteria. As of the transaction date, Akbank has become the first and only Turkish bank to link both of its syndication transactions in 2021 to sustainability criteria.
“Although our new syndicated loan received around US $900 million of demand from 36 banks from 20 countries, we renewed it as US $700 million in line with the needs of our bank”
Regarding Akbank’s successful syndication transaction Akbank CEO Hakan Binbaşgil commented, “Despite the volatility in international markets, we have managed to lower the syndication costs by 35 bps in USD tranche and 50 bps in Euro tranche compared to our October 2020 transaction. Although our new syndicated loan received around US $900 million of demand from 36 banks from 20 countries, we renewed it as US $700 million in line with the needs of our bank. In such a challenging environment, Akbank successfully renewed its syndicated loan with broad participation. 7 new banks from 5 countries (UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, India, Switzerland), which were not involved in last year’s transaction, participated in this transaction. We are proud to sign yet another syndication transaction that underpins the trust in the Turkish banking sector. We would like to thank all investors and relationship banks who participated and supported our transaction.”
“All of our foreign borrowing transactions in 2021- including our syndication - have been ESG linked”
Noting the hike in ESG-linked deals in global borrowing transactions Binbaşgil continued, “With our ESG-linked transactions, we continue to lead the Turkish banking sector in this area. We have added three sustainability performance criteria (ESG KPIs) to our October 2021 syndicated loan as we did in April 2021. If these performance criteria, which consist of gender balance, non-lending to greenfield coal power plant projects, and the electricity sourcing of our bank from renewable resources, are met during the specified test periods, there will be an improvement in the terms of our syndicated loan. We have announced that we aim to increase the share of sustainable finance based borrowing transactions in our overall foreign borrowing to 30% by the end of 2021. All of our foreign borrowing transactions in 2021 have been ESG linked. As a result - including our October syndicated loan facility with sustainability criteria - we have increased this ratio over 40%. We will continue to take our sustainability related actions forward.”