Amid the broader sell-off in the emerging markets on Thursday, Turkey’s lira currency and country-specific exchange traded fund plunged following a report of the potential resignation of a deputy governor at the central bank.
The iShares MSCI Turkey ETF (NasdaqGM: TUR) was down 3.8% Thursday. TUR plummeted 50.8% year-to-date.
Meanwhile, the lira currency depreciated 2.7% against the U.S. dollar and was trading at 6.65 to the greenback after falling off as much as 5% earlier in the day.
The weakness in the Turkish markets is attributed to speculation that the Turkish central bank deputy governor and ratesetter Erkan Kilimci is leaving the bank and appeared to have joined the board of the Development Bank of Turkey, Bloomberg reports.
BlueBay Asset Management strategist Timothy Ash said that the central bank had failed again to negate the currency’s slide and are essentially “missing in action,” CNBC reports.
“Here we go again … They need to do so much better than this,” Ash said in a note.