MAYBANK OPEN TO COLLABORATION WITH TURKISH BANK

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 3 (Bernama) -- Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) is open to
collaboration with its counterpart in Turkey but is not interested to buy any
stake, group chief executive officer Abdul Wahid Omar said Tuesday.

"We are open to collaboration in terms of trade finance and products.
Collaboration does not have to be in the form of equity," he said.

"It is not our intention in this moment to look at equity investment in
Turkey," he told reporters on the sidelines of the Sixth Annual Kuala Lumpur
Islamic Finance Forum here.

On Monday, Second Finance Minister Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah said that Turkey's
leading bank, Bank Asya, was keen to tap the expertise of Maybank and CIMB Bank
Bhd to jointly establish Islamic banking operations in Turkey.

He said that Bank Asya representatives had expressed the bank's interest at
a business meeting with the Finance Ministry during the World Bank/International
Monetary Fund Conference in Istanbul recently.

Abdul Wahid said the group's focus still remained on Southeast Asia and to
some extent South Asia.

"We will get in touch with the minister's office (Finance Ministry) to find
out a bit more and it actually allows us to have an opportunity to engage with
the minister," he said.

Describing Turkey as "an interesting country", Abdul Wahid was in Istanbul
last month for the IMF meeting.

"I think Turkey is an interesting country. It is a large economy. The size
of Turkish economy is about US$750 million, which is about half the size of the
Asean economy at US$1.5 billion," he said.

"Where we are looking at this is from a perspective of trade and how we can
help Malaysian companies to do more investment and trade with Turkish entities,"
Abdul Wahid said.

"To make it clear, we are not looking at expanding into Turkey per se but it
is more of encouraging trade between businesses," he said.

Asked whether Maybank was looking at financing some Turkish projects, Abdul
Wahid said: "No. It is more of looking at trade finance opportunities for
Malaysian companies doing business with their Turkish counterparts. So, it is
within that context."

In addition to trade financing, the bank was also interested in
collaborating on Islamic finance there, he said.

On a report that banks were positioning themselves to increase average
lending rates gradually for their long-term loans, Abdul Wahid said each bank
would be looking at its own respective requirement.

It was reported that one of the first loan segments to be impacted would be
mortgages.

"We adjust based on competition. So, if we are able to get a sufficient
number of mortgages at slightly higher pricing, obviously that is something
which we will look at," he said.

"It is as a whole dynamic in terms of risk reward and pricing which we
continuously look at," he added.

Abdul Wahid said as Maybank is able to get more loans, good growth and reach
an optimal level, it will adjust pricing accordingly.

"Meaning that there will be case whereby we increase the mortgage slightly
and we bring down our SME (small and medium enterprise) loans for example or our
corporate loans and so on," he said.

Abdul Wahid said during the current financial year, the bank had seen a
seven per cent growth in housing loan performance compared to a decline last
year.

In terms of the price of mortgage, Malaysia is still one of the countries
with the lowest mortgage, he said.
-- BERNAMA