The family of a Turkish billionaire who owns a football stadium named after the country’s recently re-elected authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, could be in line for £650m by floating an industrial company in London.
The family of Turgay Ciner, 67, has built up an empire worth an estimated $1.6bn (£1.3bn) that spans mining, chemicals, shipping, media and football. He controls WE Soda, which announced plans on Wednesday for an initial public offering (IPO) on the London stock market that is expected to value the company at up to $8bn.
The flotation of 10% of the shares in WE Soda, the world’s largest producer of natural soda ash, which is used in glass manufacturing and photovoltaic glass for solar panels, could generate $800m for the family’s Ciner Group conglomerate. The company said it would use the proceeds of the float to pay down debts against other businesses in the group.
The rare London IPO could be so large that WE Soda – which is chaired by Ciner’s wife, Didem – may be propelled into the FTSE 100 index of the UK’s largest companies.
Proceeds raised in London IPOs fell 90% last year as the invasion of Ukraine and gloomy global economic conditions led to volatile stock markets, according to research by the consultancy EY.
The government is attempting to make London a more attractive place for international companies to list their stock, after a string of businesses opted to float overseas, frequently in the US.
Susannah Streeter, the head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “The stock market launch of the industrial materials maker will be the FTSE’s first major IPO this year, but although this is a much-needed drop in a parched landscape, it’s still unlikely to lead to a flood of immediate listings due to the still volatile nature of market sentiment.”
Ciner, who started work as an apprentice in tea shops while at high school, began building his business empire by importing Mercedes-Benz cars from Germany at the age of 28 with his brother Tuncer, according to the Turkish newspaper Haberler.
He moved into media in a partnership with Sabah Group in 1998. Now Ciner Media Group owns the Habertürk newspaper, Habertürk TV and Habertürk Radio and co-owns the Turkish-language Bloomberg HT.
Many of the Ciner Media Group’s outlets have a reputation for supporting Erdoğan, who was re-elected president on Sunday.
Alasdair Warren, the chief executive of WE Soda, said Ciner was apolitical. “The way in which the Ciner group conducts its business is to be political agnostic,” he said.
“The IPO plan has been something we have been working towards for several years. We focus on the merits of [the] company, not speculating on [the] outcome of the election. Now that the outcome is known, it is a perfectly good time to proceed with [an] IPO.”
Ciner owns the Istanbul football team Kasımpaşa, which is based in the Beyoğlu neighbourhood where Erdoğan grew up. The club’s ground is named the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Stadium. Warren declined to comment on whether the naming of the stadium reflected any relationship between Ciner and the president.
The family are understood to own at least three homes in London, including a £40m villa in Holland Park.
