Turkey Hopes for German Telekom Bid

Turkey is hoping that German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom will submit a bid for a stake in state-owned Turk Telekom, the Turkish minister for transport and communications said in a magazine interview released on Wednesday. The German giant would be "very welcome" to take part in the privatization of Turk Telekom, Binali Yildirim told the business weekly WirtschaftsWoche in the pre-release of an interview to be published on Thursday. And even if Deutsche Telekom did not take part in the first phase of privatization, it could still submit a later bid, as long as it did so by the end of May, the minister said. The German group's finance chief Karl-Gerhard Eick told WirtschaftsWoche that Deutsche Telekom had only recently decided not to submit for a 55-percent stake in Turk Telekom that Ankara wants to sell. The Turkish group may have a strong position in fixed network communications, but its position in the domestic mobile sector was relatively weak, Eick said. Turk Telekom has a 40-percent stake in Turkey's smallest mobile operator Avea.