Barclays Left Out a Fun Fact About Turkey's Finance Minister

(Bloomberg) -- Barclays released a note commenting on the new Turkish cabinet, and the Treasury and Finance minister in particular. Nothing unusual about that.

But there was something peculiar about this communique. In his seven-sentence biography of Berat Albayrak -- who was appointed Monday to the dual posting -- analyst Durukal Gun failed to mention that the newly minted minister is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law.

That tidbit was all financial markets seemed to care about. The lira plummeted to as low as 4.7487 relative to the U.S. dollar as traders feared this nepotism signaled Erdogan’s desire to continue concentrating power and run easier monetary policy. Those fears appear to have been well-founded, as the president made another move against central bank autonomy on Tuesday.

Authoring financial research under the increasingly authoritarian Erdogan regime has been a stressful task. Analysts have been warned of the dangers of dissent and publishing critical reports. One, Mert Ulker, was even ousted from his job and faced a criminal complaint as a result.

Gun, who is based in London, didn’t immediately respond to questions about the substance of his note.

To contact the reporter on this story: Luke Kawa in New York at lkawa@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Andrew Dunn

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