Bank manager in Italy dismissed after refusing credit to Turkish company

ISTANBUL

A bank manager in Italy has been sacked after she refused to provide credit to a Turkish company, the Sabah newspaper reported on Feb. 28.

“We applied to a bank in Italy for a loan. The bank manager, however, told me that they did not want to do business with us because we are Turkish,” Süleyman Orakçıoğlu, board chairman of Orka Holding, told the newspaper.

She was fired after a senior manager at UniCredit, a shareholder in the Turkish lender Yapı Kredi Bankası, intervened, according to Orakçıoğlu. 

“Our company increased exports to Italy by 85 percent but it was denied credit in this country, only because of our nationality,” Orakçıoğlu said, adding that they face problems in other European countries.

“For instance, Germany denied visa to one of our teams that would carry out the interior design work in a new shop. Thus, the opening of the store had to be postponed. Moreover, in Madrid, the owner of a shop, which we were planning to rent to launch a new store, demanded five years’ rent in advance after three months of talks. We ended up renting another space,” Orakçıoğlu complained.

Orka Holding owns well-known fashion brands such as Damat, Damat’S, and Tween.

The company’s revenues stood at 600 million liras last year, while their revenue target for 2018 is 750 million liras, Orakçıoğlu said.

The company plans to open 30 stores in Turkey and a total of 53 new stores abroad this year, including its first debut stores in Cameroon, Algeria, Libya, Tunusia, and Saudi Arabia.