Turkey’s Akbank second quarter net profit soars by 70 percent

ISTANBUL – Reuters

Turkey’s Akbank said its second quarter net profit multiplied by 70 percent to 914 million Turkish Liras ($475 million), but still remained modest compared to market expectations.

The bank recorded strong profit on high commission revenues and the income yielded by the sale of its non-performing loans portfolio which elevated the bank’s size of assets to 167.9 billion liras.

Akbank’s net profit was 535 million liras in the same period of last year, according to yesterday’s income statement with Borsa Istanbul.

Its net profit for the first half of the year totaled 1.78 billion liras, with a 63.4 percent rise.

The second-quarter commission and fee revenue of the bank, which was recently slammed by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for being unfair for citizens, also increased by 27.2 percent, rising to 579.7 million liras.

Meanwhile, the income generated from interests came in at 1.5 billion liras, which is three-fold that of non-interest revenues.