Italy's Unicredito Italiano SpA on Monday bought 50%of Turkey's Koc Financial Services AS, which owns the private bank Kocbank, a brokerage house, a leasing company and a factoring firm.
The 50-50 partnership will include joint control over Kocbank AS, Koc Yatirim Brokerage, Kocbank Netherland NV, Kocbank Azerbaijan and other operations.
Unicredito has invested US$240 million in Koc Financial Services, or half of its estimated value.
The partnership is part of Unicredito's expansion effort in the Mediterranean. Italy's third-largest bank already has the largest presence in eastern Europe of any other western European bank.
Turkey is trying to recover from a deep crisis that has seen 2 million job losses and resulted in a contraction in the economy by 9.4% last year.
