Lawsuit filed in US against Turkish Central Bank's new governor
The customers of collapsed First Republic Bank filed a class action lawsuit against the bank's former executive Hafize Gaye Erkan, the new governor of Turkey's Central Bank, on charges of violating banking laws and making false and misleading statements, the US correspondent of Turkish daily Hurriyet said on Friday.
Merkez Bankası yeni başkanı Hafize Gaye Erkan hakkında, ABD’de yöneticisi olduğu çöken First Republic Bank’ın müşterileri tarafından bankacılık yasalarını ihlal etmek, yanlış ve yanıltıcı beyanlar vermek suçlamalarıyla toplu dava açıldı. pic.twitter.com/ryY5AOFc2S
— Razi Canikligil (@canikligil) June 9, 2023
"The application for the lawsuit against Hafize Gaye Erkan was made on 24 April," Hurriyet's Razi Canikligil added.
Holding a degree from Istanbul's Bogazici University, a graduate of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program and holding a PhD in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton University, Erkan was named a managing director at Goldman Sachs in 2011, and subsequently joined First Republic Bank, where she eventually took over as co-CEO in June 2021. She resigned only six months later, and the bank collapsed in late April this year.
On 13 October 2021, a month and a half ahead of her resignation, a quote by Erkan in the bank's press release on third quarter financial results highlighted "the safety and stability of First Republic."
The bank's share price has tumbled 90% since March and depositors have pulled out tens of billions of dollars of cash, amid fears that First Republic will be the next lender to face a liquidity crisis after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Financial Times said late March.