The [not so little] bank that could

Turkey’s newest bank is all but 19 months old and has a single parent, Lebanon’s Audi Group. It goes by the name of Odeabank. Odea is apparently not a Turkish word but a brand name chosen because using the family name-based Audi brand would have collided with the four-ringed German car maker’s rights. But look how the kid has grown. Assets of $8.8 billion, customer deposits of $7 billion and loans of $6 billion were the cornerstone figures for Odeabank at the end of March 2014. That compares to a practically blank slate for a balance sheet with assets of $300 million in the form of the bank’s capital when management threw open the doors of the first branch in November 2012. This growth was far beyond anything that Audi had anticipated, says Freddie Baz, the chief financial officer and strategy director of Bank Audi. “If you had asked me