Regulator appoints trio of independents to Turkcell board

Turkey’s financial industry regulator, the Capital Markets Board, has appointed three independent directors to Turkcell’s board, removing three existing directors in the process. The development was revealed in an emailed statement on Monday, and Reuters says that the move has been welcomed by the company’s main shareholders, who have been at loggerheads since 2005 over the control of the group. In recent years the labyrinthine ownership dispute between Turkey’s Cukurova Holding, Scandinavian telecoms group TeliaSonera and Russia’s Altimo has left Turkcell unable to agree on the composition of its board, and as a result it has not paid a dividend since 2009.