ROME: Italian lender Intesa Sanpaolo SpA officially announced plans to expand operations in Turkey via its İstanbul branch, which was opened in June of last year, becoming the second Italian bank in the country after UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank in terms of assets.
Intesa opened its İstanbul branch last year with a starting share capital of $300 million, the minimum required capital for starting a bank in Turkey. Intesa’s entry comes at a time when the London-based giant HSBC announced that it is considering selling its Turkish unit and the US’s Citigroup Inc. has exited its Turkish banking stake at a loss.
Turkish banks remain vulnerable to investor sentiment, international ratings agency Fitch said earlier this month.
Intesa’s Executive Vice Chairman Marcello Sala told reporters on Thursday in İstanbul that the bank expected to focus on corporate banking in Turkey, basically providing support for 1,207 Italian-owned businesses in Turkey along with their partners in the country.
Referring to an “Italian model” in banking, Sala said small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) constitute nearly 70 percent of the firms in Italy — similar to Turkey — and that Intesa planned to capitalize on SME potential in Turkey.
Intesa was interested in possible stake acquisitions at Turkish lenders Garanti and Finansbank before it decided to apply for a banking license under its own name back in 2012. Sala added that the bank had no plans for an acquisition for the time being.
Intesa Sanpaolo General Manager Gaetano Miccichè said on Thursday in İstanbul that they had already invested in such emerging peers as Poland, Brazil, Russia, China and Romania prior to Turkey, and expected to make use of a growing banking potential in Turkish markets.
Gregorio De Felice, chief economist at Intesa, said on Thursday that the bank would encourage more Italian firms from the infrastructure, transport, mechanics, textile, urban transformation and energy sectors in particular to take advantage of investment incentives in Turkey. De Felice confirmed that private debt, the current account deficit (CAD), the lira’s depreciation against the US dollar and high inflation remain key risks for Turkey.
Intesa’s Italian peer, UniCredit, along with Turkey’s Koç Group, is one of the main shareholders of Turkey’s fourth-largest private bank, Yapı Kredi. Earlier this month, UniCredit and Intesa said they would pool together up to 2 billion euros in soured loans in a special vehicle to make the debt easier to recover.
