Turkish stocks fall on Akbank, Turkcell concerns

ISTANBUL, May 9 (Reuters) - Turkish equities fell on Friday, hit by falls in Turkcell TCELL.IS after results this week and in Akbank AKBNK.IS after Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said it aimed to shed $400 billion of assets over two to three years.

Citigroup has a 20 percent stake in Akbank, whose shares fell 2.34 percent on Friday.

Istanbul's main stock index .XU100 lost 0.65 percent to close at 42,034.70, the second day of losses after the bourse lost more than 2 percent on Thursday.

Bonds held steady as the yield on the benchmark Jan 13, 2010 bond <0#TRTSYSUM=IS> closed at 19.80 percent from the previous day's close of 19.85 percent. The Turkish lira <IYIX=> weakened to 1.2700 against the dollar from Thursday's close of 1.2695.

Turkcell, which tumbled 9.5 percent on Thursday after worse-than-expected results, dropped another 1.6 percent.

"The 10 percent fall in Turkcell yesterday spoiled sentiment and this spread to other shares," said EFG trader Canan Uras, adding that the Citigroup statement had also created market unease.

Dealers said attention would now turn to Turk Telekom as book building came to an end on Friday ahead of an initial public offering of up to 17.75 percent of Turk Telekom, including an over-allotment option.

Turk Telekom is scheduled to list on the Istanbul Stock Exchange on May 15. Previously an initial price range was set of between 3.9-4.7 lira for the shares.

"We've been seeing selling for the past two days. A lot of it was expected due to the initial public offering of Turk Telekom, but yesterday we broke an important support level and that made the markets nervous," said Derya Tanriverdi, an analyst at Tacir Securities.