Azerbaijan, Baku, November 5 / Trend, A. Tagiyeva /
Turkey's Iş Bankası plans to open its branch in Azerbaijan and thus has already appealed to Turkey's bank operation regulation and supervision authority, Adnan Bali, the bank's Director General, stated yesterday at the opening ceremony of the bank's branch in Bulgaria, newspaper Aksam reported on Saturday.
"Iş Bankası has its branches in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Bulgaria. We plan to open the next branches in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan," Bali said.
Iş Bankası expects the supervisory authority to issue a permission to receive the opportunity to implement procedures needed to start operating in Azerbaijan.
Iş Bankası Deputy Director General Serdar Gencher told Trend earlier that the bank plans to develop actively its operation in Azerbaijan and submitted appeal to the Central Bank of Azerbaijan over establishment of the bank's branch in the country.
Founded in 1924, Iş Bankası is Turkey's biggest private-run bank in terms of assets and has contributed substantially to the development of Turkish economy over multiyear history of its existence. The bank has had 1,194 branches with 24,788 employees throughout Turkey. The bank also has 12 branches in Germany and one branch in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Bulgaria each.
Iş Bankası assets have increased by 21 percent against the beginning of the year to 160 billion lira on October 1 while the capital grew by 5 percent up to 18 billion lira. Net profit of the bank in the first nine months was 1.8 billion lira.
As of the early July 2011, the bank's market value was equivalent to 4.68 percent of the combined value of Istanbul Stock Exchange's 355 companies of 470,181,750,000 lira.
Currently, there are 44 banks operational in Azerbaijan, including 22 ones with foreign capital. The share of foreign capital in seven of them varies from 50 percent to 100 percent, and in 13 of them is up to 50 percent. This includes branches of two foreign banks operating in the country.