Turkey: High foreign and local currency ratings for Anadolu Efes

On May 12th, Standard & Poor’s (“S&P”), the international credit ratings agency, has assigned long term corporate credit rating of BB to Anadolu Efes Biracılık ve Malt Sanayii A.S. (“Anadolu Efes”) both on Foreign Currency and on Local Currency basis. The rating outlook is Stable.

The BB Foreign Currency rating that is assigned to Anadolu Efes by S&P is one notch higher than the sovereign rating, while the BB Local Currency rating is at par with that of the sovereign.

This represents the first time any Turkish entity has exceeded the sovereign ceiling in terms of the Foreign Currency credit rating among the issued and published ratings by S&P.

Furthermore, both the Foreign and Local Currency ratings of Anadolu Efes are higher than any other published ratings to date, across any sector in Turkey by S&P.

In its Press Release, dated May 12th 2006, S&P stated that the assignment of BB rating to Anadolu Efes entails the Company’s highly profitable Turkish beer business, which underpins the group’s strong and resilient free cash flow generation, and the group’s increasing operational diversity through the growing international beer business and its majority ownership of Coca-Cola İçecek, A.Ş., which in turn is one of the world’s 10 largest Coca-Cola bottlers.

E-malt.com, the global information source for the brewing and malting industry professionals. The bi-weekly E-malt.com Newsletters feature latest industry news, statistics in graphs and tables, world barley and malt prices, and other relevant information. Click here to get full access to E-malt.com. If you are a Castle Malting client, you can get free access to E-malt.com website and publications. Contact us for more information at marketing@castlemalting.com .