FCI welcomes Lider Faktoring A.S. as its new Associate Member in Turkey.Lider Faktoring A.S. (further – Lider) is headquartered in Istanbul with 26 branches across Turkey. The Company was established as Setat Factoring in 1992. Later Group purchased Şetat Factoring licence and changed its name to Lider. Lider has gradually expanded its branch network from none in 2002 to 26 branches covering clients in 60 cities. Lider plans to continue its expansion and open up more new branches in the coming years. Lider’s geographic expansion strategy primarily focuses on areas where there is existing factoring demand, which are in close proximity to an industrial center and with low factoring penetration.Lider is a publicly traded company where the majority of the shares are held by the family and 9.9% of the shares are held by Credit Suisse. 15% of Lider shares are traded on Borsa Istanbul.Lider is mainly active in “with-recourse factoring”, providing the Company with recourse to both the underlying debtor and the customer. Lider also does non-recourse factoring by the supplier financing method.Lider generally manages a diversified portfolio with the majority of its factoring volumes in small sized transactions, sourced from a broad range of companies across many industries, mainly in the manufacturing sector.In addition, Lider has good corporate governance controls. Lider’s current (August 2017) corporate governance rating by SAHA is 9.10. Lider, for three years (2010, 2011 & 2013), has been awarded the prestigious corporate governance award from Corporate Governance Association of Turkey (“TKYD”) in the “non-public companies” category. Lider has been receiving credit ratings from Fitch Ratings since 2009. In September 2016, Fitch Ratings determined Lider’s national long-term rating at A-(tur). The rating has a Stable Outlook.