“We were caught by the crisis with our seatbelts fastened,” says Suzan Sabanci Dincer, Akbank’s chairwoman, in a fair summary of the ease with which Turkey’s banking sector has withstood the shocks of the past two years.
Due to reforms enacted after a previous banking crisis, Turkish banks – Akbank among them – entered the downturn with enviable capital cushions, no exposure to toxic derivatives and with the bulk of their funding coming from a stable deposit base.
