Bank of China, one of China's and the world's largest lenders, completed the application process for operating in Turkey, the Turkish banking watchdog said on Friday.
Mehmet Ali Akben, chair of the Board of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency of Turkey (BDDK), said the Chinese lender completed the application process and submitted all necessary documents to the BDDK authority.
Akben said that currently they are conducting correspondence with Chinese authorities, and added, “Then the licensing process in Turkey will be started.”
He said to start commercial operations the bank needs more time. “In the meantime, they had to rent a place and establish an IT technology infrastructure,” Akben said, “But the application process has been completed.”
Bank of China, the fourth-largest commercial bank in the world, started its initiative to enter the Turkish market in 2015, after another Chinese lender, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), took over a majority stake in Tekstilbank in early 2015.
