LONDON, 22 November 2003 — Britain’s biggest company, HSBC Holdings Plc, resumed service in Turkey yesterday, and other British firms in the region remained on alert a day after 27 people were killed by truck bombs in Istanbul.
The explosions, outside the British Consulate and offices of HSBC, injured more than 400 people just five days after two Istanbul synagogues were devastated by suicide truck bombs.
“We are fully operational in Turkey today,” said a spokesman for HSBC, which opened its first office in Turkey in 1990 and now has about 160 branches and 3,500 staff in the country. It has not been revealed how many of its staff were among the dead.
“We have contingency and business recovery plans, and our people in Turkey have done a remarkable job,” the spokesman said, adding HSBC had a building ready in case of emergency, and operations from its damaged head office, where about 400 people worked, have been moved there.
At 1245 GMT, HSBC shares were 1.6 percent, or 14 pence, higher at 874 pence, reversing Thursday’s 11 pence loss.
British insurer Aviva Plc said it had reopened its branch in Istanbul, which closed on Thursday after the bombs. The office was close to HSBC’s bombed head office.
HSBC, which has operations in 12 Middle East countries, said it would go ahead with a presentation of its new five-year plan next week to investors, who may want reassurance about the security of its businesses.
“People will want to hear what they say about some of the high-risk areas they operate in,” said Richard Pierson, who helps manage five billion pounds ($8.5 billion) at Framlington Investment Management.
Meanwhile, British Airways Plc said its two flights a day to Istanbul from London were continuing. British hotels company Hilton Group Plc, which runs eight hotels with a total of over 2,000 rooms in Turkey, said it was keeping security constantly under review. “Our first priority is to concern ourselves with the safety of our guests and also, equally importantly, our staff,” a spokesman said. “The appropriate responsible people in the company are constantly on alert to what they need to do in the interests of both these policies.”
Another British hotelier, InterContinental Hotels Group Plc , said, “We have got rigorous procedures in place, but we would review everything that we are doing to make sure that we are on full alert and as safe as we can be.” InterContinental has five managed or franchised hotels in Turkey, four of them in Istanbul.
HSBC, which carries out personal and corporate banking and stockbroking in Turkey, shut its branches there on Thursday afternoon on the advice of Turkish authorities. The bank has built up its Turkish operations in the past two years with acquisitions. In 2001, it bought Demirbank, the fifth-biggest Turkish private bank, and last year bought Turkish store-card company Benkar. British exports to Turkey in 2002 were worth 1.29 billion pounds ($2.2 billion), or 0.5 percent of all exports, while imports totaled 2.15 billion pounds (0.7 percent), Britain’s National Statistics said.
