Turkey's Credit Eruope shifts focus from retail to medium-sized companies

With a new management team, Turkish Credit Europe also changes strategy, with the focus now on medium-sized companies instead of retail, while alternative channels will make up for new offices.

Credit Europe Bank, a medium-sized bank controlled by Turkish billionaire Husnu Ozyegin, for this year budgeted 5.4m-euro income, up 50% from 2010, while assets should stall at 1.2bn euros.

"We're not targeting general asset or market share growth. However, we want to grow on certain selected segments, on the corporate one in the areas of production, textiles, agriculture and energy, and on retail in cards and savings products," said Omer Tetik, appointed last November as chairman of the bank, during a press conference organised for the presentation of the 2011 strategy and of the new management team.

Unlike retail, where many branches are needed to sell low value loans, in the area of companies significantly larger deals can be sealed. In the future, distribution will be mainly carried out through alternative channels, in which 1m euros has already been invested for development, and which should make up for the lack of a very dense territorial network.