Turkey’s financial market is a market with vision and innovation. While the government is pressing ahead with plans to create an international financial centre in Istanbul, Turkish issuers have broken new ground in the international arena – and favourable legislation could bring even more innovation.
Şekerbank, the country’s 16th largest lender by Tier 1 capital, was the first bank in the world to issue a covered bond backed by a pool of small and medium-sized enterprise loans. The deal was sold in an international private placement in 2011. It was followed by similar deals by Turkish banks Denizbank and Yapı Kredi, but it was 18 months before this type of deal was replicated outside of Turkey, in a transaction by Germany’s Commerzbank.
