November 06, 2009

Profit in Turkey’s banking industry rose 41 percent from a year earlier to 15.7 billion Turkish Liras ($10.5 billion) in the first nine months of 2009, the industry regulator said.Profit rose from 14.2 billion liras in the first eight months, the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency, or BDDK, said on its Web site on Thursday. The industry’s capital adequacy rate rose 2.1 percentage points from the end of 2008 to 20.1 percent in September, it said.

Turkish banks have survived the global financial crisis without any government assistance, and profits have been boosted by a record-breaking series of cuts to the benchmark interest rate. The central bank has axed 10 percentage points from the rate in a year, helping drive yields on lira bonds to about 8 percent at the end of September from 20 percent a year earlier.