Turkey’s food giant sells 30 pct of key biscuit company to its own UK-based company

Yıldız Holding has sold 102.6 million shares of Ülker Bisküvi, Turkey’s largest cookie and biscuit company, to its wholly-owned U.K. based unit Pladis, as part of a restructuring strategy.

The shares have been sold for two billion Turkish Liras, at 19.5 Turkish liras per share, according to a statement issued by Ülker at the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP) on Dec. 29, 2017.

Yıldız Holding had initially sold 71.8 million Ülker shares, some 21 percent, to Pladis in December 2016. With the latest sale, Pladis’s Ülker shares have risen to 51 percent.

“The structuring of our snacks business under Pladis Foods United [which is 100 percent owned by Yıldız Holding] has been completed,” the company said in its KAP statement.

“The sale will not change Yıldız Holding’s controlling power,” it said, adding that the Ülker shares would continue to be owned by Yıldız Holding.

Turkey’s leading biscuits and confectionary group Yıldız Holding has reorganized its global brands, De Met’s, Godiva, United Biscuits and Ülker, under the Pladis umbrella.

Yıldız Holding became the world’s third largest cookie company after its acquisition of U.K.-based United Biscuits in 2014.