OREANDA-NEWS. March 19, 2010. MMK-Atakas project financing was selected by the Trade Finance magazine as The Deal of The Year. Trade Finance magazine is a specialist publication of the Euromoney Institutional Investor group and is the most authoritative and well established publication in the market.

Trade Finance magazine’s managing editor, Jonathan Bell, comments: “Despite all the problems in the commodity markets and particularly the ferrous sector through 2009, Russian company OJSC MMK put together a ground-breaking deal to secure financing for the MMK Atakas flat steel making plant in Turkey. The transaction is a worthy winner of a Trade Finance magazine Deal of the Year award for 2009.”

MMK Atakas, a Turkish company jointly owned by MMK (50% + 1 share) and Atakas Group (50 % -1 share), was established for developing, engineering, constructing, commissioning and operating of an integrated flat steel making complex at two sites in Iskenderun (Southern Turkey) and Kocaeli (Western Turkey) (the “Project”).

Kicked off in October 2007, the Project is expected to be completed by 2010. In this perspective, the project will take place in three phases. As a first phase, the steel service centre in Iskenderun was completed by the end of 2008. The second phase includes the launching of downstream production lines; and finally with the completion of the electric arc furnace and related facilities the third phase will be achieved.

Designed for an annual capacity of 2.3 million tons of flat steel production, the Project should have a competitive advantage in the global flat steel market due to its ability to directly meet the growing Turkish and Middle East market demand.

Effective cooperation of OJSC MMK with leading intetnational financial institutions was recognized a number of times. MMK-Atakas project financing was awarded as The Deal of The Year by the Project Finance magazine in February 2010.

MMK Rolling Mill 2000 financing was named by the Trade Finance magazine as The Deal of The Year in 2009. On December 29, 2008 OJSC MMK and a consortium of international banks including ABN AMRO Bank N.V. and ING Bank N.V. signed a EUR 416,5 million 10-year loan with cover offered by EULER HERMES Kreditversicherungs-AG (Germany).