White & Case is mourning the loss of Turkish Managing Partner Asli Basgoz, who has recently passed away.
According to White & Case, "over the past 30 years, [Basgoz] gained extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and privatizations, as well as capital markets, private equity and financing deals." According to the firm, "her ease with the complexities of intricately structured cross-border transactions was based on her international legal background, working in and across multiple jurisdictions. Before relocating to Turkey, Asli — who was fluent in English, Turkish, and French — practiced for a number of years in the United States, and represented both domestic and multinational clients in an array of major global deals. Adept at coordinating legal counsel across multiple territories, she also had significant experience of leading international teams of lawyers from the Firm's offices around the world."
In addition, White & Case reports, "the international scope of Asli's practice was matched by her wide-ranging sector knowledge, having worked with clients in banking and financial services, healthcare, manufacturing services and tourism, energy, telecommunications and media. Her familiarity with the particular challenges associated with each of these industries, combined with her creative deal-making skills, made her an essential resource for clients seeking to execute the most challenging and technically complex of transactions."
Finally, the firm reports, "Asli's formidable reputation led to her leading role in a number of pioneering and groundbreaking deals, including Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentina's EUR 4.2 billion purchase of 24.9 percent of Turkey's leading bank, Turkiye Garanti Bankasi AS, at the time the largest-ever Turkish private sector M&A transaction. Asli also jointly led the team that advised Yuksel Insaat A.S. on its USD 200 million high yield bond offering, which is thought to be the first by a Turkish issuer in 15 years."
In addition, Basgoz played a key role in Sisal S.p.A.'s successful bid for a ten-year contract to operate Turkey's Milli Piyango lottery that was tendered by Turkey's Wealth Fund (as reported by CEE Legal Matters on October 24 2019), which won CEE Legal Matters' Turkish Deal of the Year for 2019 (and about which Basgoz was interviewed in the CEE Legal Matters magazine earlier this summer), and just recently, Zynga Inc.'s USD 1.8 billion acquisition of Istanbul-based Peak Oyun Yazilim ve Pazarlama, making Peak Turkey's first unicorn (as reported on June 3, 2020), about which she was interviewed in the September 2020 issue.
Basgoz was one of the four members of White & Case's most senior decision-making body, the Executive Committee.
Basgoz got her B.A. from the University of Indiana and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. She spent one year as a Litigation Associate with Shearman & Sterling in New York before moving to White & Case, and Turkey, where she founded the firm's Istanbul and Ankara offices, in 1985.
