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Sibel Sanus, the executive vice-president of Bank Kapital's international relations department, says that big Turkish banks may find it easy to sneer at smaller banks but asks: "how big are the big banks?
"The total asset size of all Turkish banks is $100 billion. Well that is 10% of Deutsche Bank's total assets. Let's face it, the whole of the Turkish banking sector is the size of a medium-size European bank. So who is small?"
Bank Kapital was established eight years ago by a Kurdish family of building contractors. In 1997, with 15 branches and assets of $310 million, it ranked 39th of 72 Turkish banks. In 1998 Bank Kapital, like most other small and medium-size banks, expanded its branch network in order to establish a wider customer base and reduce reliance on foreign funding.
Sanus does not think that 74 banks are too many for a population exceeding 60 million. She predicts that in the future there will be more rather than fewer banks. "In the next five years I don't see any mergers taking place in Turkey," she says, disapproving of the recent trend for mega-mergers among US and European banks.