Bank Asya shares return for trading, witnessing steep fluctuations

ISTANBUL

A Bank Asya logo is seen at a branch in Ankara. REUTERS Photo

Turkey’s stock exchange Borsa Istanbul has lifted the ban on the trading of Islamic lender Bank Asya’s shares a week after it was halted for a second time, causing its shares to witness another tumultuous day.   

The bank’s shares were opened in the afternoon session on Sept. 24 at 0.69 Turkish Liras. The shares, which dropped to 0.64 liras, recovered its losses and rose up by over 10 percent and ended the day at highest price of 0.76 liras.
Borsa Istanbul had first halted the trade on Bank Asya’s shares Aug. 7, saying the lender would be removed from the stock exchange’s indexes until uncertainty regarding its ownership is resolved.

The trading resumed on Sept. 15, but after the value of the lender’s shares halved over three and a half days, Borsa Istanbul announced the new suspension on Sept. 18.

The Islamic lender, with more than a million deposit-holding customers and 280 branches, has been caught at the center of a power struggle between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic scholar whose sympathizers founded the bank.

Bank Asya’s profits and deposits tumbled in the six months after December 2013, when the rift between Erdoğan and Gülen burst into the open with a government graft scandal which Erdoğan, then prime minister, said was concocted by Gülen’s supporters.