ANKARA: A consortium of Turkish construction firms won a tender on Friday to build and operate a planned third airport in Istanbul which Turkey says could eventually be the world’s largest, bidding ¤22bn ($29bn) for the project.
The consortium of Cengiz, Kolin, Limak, Mapa and Kalyon bid ¤22.15bn for the 25-year lease to operate the planned airport, outbidding rivals including Turkey’s TAV Holding and Germany’s Fraport.
Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said the initial investment to construct the build-operate-transfer project would be ¤10bn.
A consortium of Turkish firm IC Ictas and Fraport, which operates Frankfurt’s airport, had placed the highest initial bid but dropped out of the process after the Turkish consortium entered a higher offer.
TAV Holding, which is partly owned by France’s Aeroports de Paris (ADP), had been one of the favourites in the process. Its shares slid almost 8 percent after it also withdrew following the initial bidding round earlier yesterday. Turkey unveiled details in January of the planned airport, which will have a total of six runways and eventually be able to handle 150 million passengers per year.
Yildirim has said the airport would be the largest in the world by passengers at full capacity, though it was not clear when this would be. Istanbul, home of flag carrier Turkish Airlines, is becoming a major regional hub, linking destinations in Europe and Asia.
Shares in Turkish Airlines, which will benefit from the new airport, were up 4.5 percent, outperforming a 1.4 percent rise by the broader Istanbul stock market. reuters
LONDON: European stock markets jumped yesterday as strong US jobs data outweighed a gloomy eurozone economic forecast, and headed towards a positive end to the week following several sessions of losses.
London’s FTSE 100 index of top companies surged by 1.09 percent to stand at 6,530.93 points in afternoon trading.
Frankfurt’s DAX 30 climbed 1.53 percent to 8,083.74 points and in Paris the CAC 40 won 1.23 percent to 3,906.30 points.
In foreign exchange trade, the European single currency eased to $1.3061 from $1.3063 late on Thursday in New York.
On the London Bullion Market, gold rose to $1,476.50 an ounce from $1,469.25. In New York, US stocks also surged after the Department of Labor reported solid jobs gains for April and a slight decline in the unemployment rate.
In morning trades, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.95 percent to 14,973.09 points, while the broad-based S&P 500 added 1.09 percent to 1,615.07 and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index increased by 1.16 percent to 3,379.38. Commenting on the US jobs data, ETX Capital economist Ishaq Siddiqi said: “Today’s report has clearly quashed worries that the US labour market has failed to improve this year and the economic recovery has stalled.”
He added that “strong upward revisions to February’s and March’s figures suggest that hiring in the US is much stronger than thought.”
Ahead of the data release, traders digested an announcement by the European Union that recession in the crisis-hit eurozone would continue unabated for the rest of the year with unemployment remaining at record levels, though it added that signs of recovery could emerge in 2014.AFP
