The strategic growth of the Turkish CSD and trade repository since 2019 : From financial infrastructure to market intelligence

Regulatory change, digitalisation, rising transparency requirements, and the growing strategic importance of data have continued to reshape the post-trade industry since 2019. For central securities depositories (CSDs), these developments have reinforced the importance of core infrastructure functions while also creating pressure to expand into new areas such as trade reporting, market intelligence, digital corporate governance, and investor-facing services. This paper examines these developments through the case of Merkezi Kayıt Kuruluşu A.Ş. (MKK), Türkiye’s Central Securities Depository and Trade Repository, and discusses how its strategic growth since 2019 reflects broader changes in the CSD business model. This is done by first outlining recent trends in CSD and post-trade services and then analysing MKK’s development across four main service pillars: depository services, data services, corporate governance services, and investor services. Based on this review, the paper shows that MKK’s progress illustrates how a national CSD can move beyond its traditional role as a core post-trade infrastructure towards a broader market infrastructure model combining resilience, connectivity, analytics, and digital service delivery in different markets both local and global. The paper concludes that the next phase of CSD development is likely to depend on the ability of market infrastructures to combine trusted core services with innovation, regional interoperability, and more intelligence-driven solutions for issuers, investors, and regulators. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.