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This study investigates challenges and opportunities that regionally expanding emerging market banks face. We focus on four leading Middle Eastern banks' internationalization trajectories and performances by employing a case study approach. We first examine the four banks' choices of target markets, entry sequencing, and entry modes over time and then analyze their entry strategies and post-entry financial performances in one of their key markets, Turkey. We show that the success of regional expansion strategies depends on parent bank characteristics such as scale and capital strength, strategic decisions regarding entry mode and timing, and host market structure and competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation banks that evaluate the savings according to the profit-loss sharing (PLS) principle are one of the essential institutions in Turkey. However, with the regulation in 2018, these institutions started to collect funds based on wakāla (agency) accounts, in addition to PLS, and this brought criticisms. There are various drawbacks in terms of the Islamic jurisdiction (fiqh) in wakāla investment accounts, and there is a concern that it might open the door to diverge from the PLS principle, which is the authentic side of participation banking. The main purpose of this study is to address the functioning of wakāla investment accounts in participation banks in terms of market dynamics as well as their fiqh aspects and thus to understand the issue from different dimensions. In the study, disclosed data and documents of participation banks are used. As a result of the research, it has been revealed that the wakāla investment accounts have various problematic parts that differ from classical fiqh, especially the expected profit ratio. On the other hand, it was concluded that the rationalisation for the introduction of wakāla investment accounts together along with the PLS accounts motivation is to keep high return, sensitive customers within the participation bank, which was raised by a temporary situation. So, that reason may cause divergence from the authenticity of the participation sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to measure the performances of commercial banks' websites in Turkey by using "Multi -Criteria Decision Making" (MCDM). The use of three MCDM methods (AHP, TOPSIS, VIKOr) consecutively constitutes the originality of this study. Based on the literature and expert opinions, 6 performance criteria (load time, page speed, markup, speed index, visitors, pageviews) and 5 website analysis tools were determined. First, the significance weights of the criteria were calculated with AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process). Second, the data obtained in the 2-month period were analyzed by TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and VIKOR (Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje) methods. "Page speed" was found to be the most important criterion in performance of banks' websites. Most successful banks in terms of website efficiency are Garanti BBVA, Isbank and QNB Finansbank according to TOPSIS whereas QNB Finansbank, Garanti BBVA and Halkbank according to VIKOR results. It is observed that banks with high deposits and number of branches and employees do not show the same success in website performance. The results are expected to shed light on managers who want to set policies and strategies for digital banking applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]