Major dutch firm to pour investments into Turkey

A leading Dutch company plans to shift a big chunk of its world investments to Turkey, State Minister for Foreign Trade Zafer Caglayan said yesterday. Caglayan, currently hold trade talks in the Netherlands, yesterday said that Dutch-based Eureko, a leading European financial services group whose core business is insurance and has operations in 13 countries, plans to channel a major share of its world investments to Turkey. "Eureko will bring its investments to Turkey in 2010," Zafer Caglayan told reporters after a reception hosted by the Turkish Embassy in The Hague. Eureko, the largest insurance group in the Netherlands, is already active in Turkish market after acquiring 80 percent of the shares of insurance firm Eureko Sigorta from Turkey's Garanti Bank. "I met with top executives of the firm," said Caglayan. "They told me that Eureko would vacate those countries and bring investments to Turkey. The company wants to grow in Turkey." In addition, Caglayan said he met with executives of BAM, a Dutch engineering and construction industries company with $9 billion in annual revenues, who told him they want to enter the Turkish market and are interested in building the third bridge on the Istanbul Straits. Caglayan also discussed with his Dutch counterpart Frank Heemskerk ways of boosting bilateral trade ties between their countries.