State-run Halkbank purchases luxury Antalya hotel

Turkey's Halkbank has become the new owner of Mardan Palace, a luxury hotel and villa complex located in the country's resort province of Antalya.
Built by Russian Azerbaijani businessman Telman Ismailov at a cost of $1.4 billion in 2009, the flashy complex has been put up for sale by an Antalya bankruptcy court for TL 207 million worth of debt that Ismailov owed to another lender, Garanti Bankası.
In a one-bidder tender on Monday, Halkbank purchased the complex for TL 360 million. However, the bank will reportedly only pay TL 207 million to cover the hotel's old debts to Garanti, while it will write off its own receivables stemming from Ismailov's separate debts to Halkbank.
Constructed on 180,000 square meters along Antalya's famous Lara Coast, the 560-room hotel Mardan Palace was opened in 2009 with a grand reception attended by international celebrities including Richard Gere, Mariah Carey, Tom Jones, Sharon Stone, Seal, Paris Hilton and Monica Bellucci, along with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and then-Tourism and Culture Minister Ertuğrul GÜnay.
During its heydays in 2010, Mardan Palace was selected by the World Travel Awards -- considered to be the tourism industry's Oscars -- as the year's most luxurious hotel.
The hotel will host Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and his 1,000-member team during the upcoming G-20 summit in Antalya.
In the meantime, Halkbank recorded a 27 percent decrease in its third-quarter net profit compared to the June-September period of last year and stood at TL 438 million, a recent statement by the lender to the Public Disclosure Fund (KAP) has revealed.
The bank also revised down its year-end target for return on equity ratio from between 20 and 22 percent to between 13 and 15 percent. While the return on assets ratio target was reduced from 2.4-2.6 percent to 1.5 percent, its capital adequacy ratio expectation for the end of 2015 was revised from 16 percent to 14 percent.