Austrian oil group OMV announced on March 3 that it has agreed to sell its Turkish fuel retailer OMV Petrol Ofisi to VIP Turkey Enerji AS, a subsidiary of Swiss-based Vitol Investment Partnership Ltd, for €1.37bn.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of this year at the latest.

 “The original plan of integrating Petrol Ofisi into the value chain of OMV Group could not be realised. Therefore, the decision to sell the company was the right and necessary step in the course of implementing our corporate strategy,” said OMV CEO Rainer Seele.

OMV bought 34% of Petrol Ofisi from Dogan Holding for $1.05bn back in 2006. Four years later, OMV acquired another 54.2% stake from Dogan for a consideration of €1bn, increasing its stake in the fuel retailer to 95.75%.

Petrol Ofisi is Turkey’s leading fuel products distribution and lubricants company with nearly 2,000 filling stations. The company’s total sales volume in 2016 amounted to 10.68mn tons. Its main rivals are Opet Petrolculuk, Shell & Turcas, BP, TP Petrol and Total Oil.

It also owns one lubricants plant, 11 fuel and three LPG terminals, 19 aviation units and approximately 1.17mn m³ of storage capacity.

“This is a strong business in a growing market. Its market leading brand has benefitted from OMV’s focus on high standards of HSSE. We are committed to maintaining this excellent track record and greatly look forward to working with the Petrol Ofisi team to capitalise on Turkey’s strong economic performance and growing demand for energy products,” said Vitol CEO Ian Taylor.

The Petrol Ofisi deal is the second major M&A transaction announced in Turkey this year so far. Last month, Spanish lender BBVA acquired an additional 9.95% of Garanti Bankasi for nearly €859mn, raising its stake in the Turkish lender to 49.85%.

Both the number of M&A deals and the transaction values in 2016 were lower than they were in 2015. There were 183 deals last year with a total value of €5.2bn versus 240 deals worth €12.5bn in the previous year, according to data from the Emerging Europe M&A report published by law firm CMS and research company EMIS.