Borsa Istanbul Chief Executive Officer Hakan Atilla will step down after the stock-exchange operator’s annual general meeting on March 26, Bloomberg cited people familiar with the matter as saying.
Atilla went on a leave on March 5 and isn’t planning to get back to work until shareholders convene later this month, the people said, asking not to be identified as no formal decision has been announced by the executive or the exchange.
Both Atilla and the stock exchange confirmed he is on leave, but neither would comment further.
Borsa Istanbul’s owner, the Turkish sovereign wealth fund TWF, is planning an initial public offering of the exchange operator by 2022.
Atilla was appointed to the role in October 2019 by former Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after being sentenced to 32 months in prison in the U.S. over helping Iran evade sanctions while he worked at Turkey’s Halkbank.
At the time of Atilla's conviction, Erdoğan branded the case as an attack on his government, claiming that it was "politically motivated."