Besides managing ongoing projects as the central securities depository and introducing new services, CRA also develops the following projects that will support the development of our capital market and economy and puts them into service in phases:

The e-GOVERNANCE Portal, which was developed by a central securities depository as a communication bridge between companies and shareholders for the first time in the world, will enable standard and uninterrupted information exchange between shareholders and issuer companies through the use of the internet, e-mail, SMS and mobile communication applications. Through the portal companies will be able to reach their shareholders directly and investors will have easy access to information on companies in an outright manner. It will also be possible to hold online investor meetings, electronic board meetings and general assembly meetings, and conduct electronic voting and proxy voting over the e-Governance platform. Companies will be able to distribute surveys to their current or potential shareholders to ensure information exchange. As a result, CRA will become an Information Center for Investors.

The first phase of the e-Governance project has been put into service in July 2011 and it includes Institutional Messages, Institutional Information, Securities Information, Notification Management, Investor Statistics and Survey applications. Other applications such as Shareholder Promotions, Blogs, Enhanced Agendas, Improved Surveys, Electronic Proxy Delegation and Voting, Electronic General Assembly Meetings and Investor Meetings will be put into service in the later phases.

General assembly meetings of companies, shares of which are in custody at CRA, will be able to be conducted on the electronic platform that will be developed by CRA. By using this system companies will be able to inform their shareholders through the CRA portal and/or other communication platforms and conduct live general assembly meetings on the portal. Investors will have remote access to general assembly meetings through the CRA portal and mobile applications and exercise their managerial rights on the electronic platform by voting with their electronic signatures. The e-GENERAL ASSEMBLY, which is a project first of its kind in scope among all the CSDs in the world, will play an important role in the development of corporate governance and investor relations in our country. e-GOVERNANCE and e-GENERAL ASSEMBLY will create significant externalities in attracting foreign investment to our markets by raising the level of corporate governance practices. The analyses on the project, which is expected to help our publicly traded companies in harmonizing their practices to the OECD Corporate Governance Principles and is a component of the IFC Project (Action No. 49), have been completed. The Electronic General Assembly Meeting System (EGAMS) software is planned to be finalized by the end of 2011 and launched in July 2012.

The e-CAS (Elektronic Customer Alert System) which was developed by a CSD for the first time in the world to prevent unacknowledged transfers of shares out of investor accounts has completed its first phase, the Notification Phase. The system which aims to minimize possible errors or abuses regarding stock certificates in investor accounts and notify investors continuously about their assets is a pioneering example in the use of technology for investor protection. The e-CAS 2.0 which is composed of the second and the third phases of the project, the Prevention and Confirmation Phases that restrict account activities subject to investor notification and electronic investor confirmation for transfers of shares from investor accounts, particularly for transfers concerning collateral management has been completed. The Prevention Phase will be activated on 3 October 2011 for transactions in pledges/collaterals.

The e-WAREHOUSE RECEIPT Project aims to dematerialize physical warehouse receipts on commodities within the electronic platform that will be developed by CRA. Securities that will be traded on Commodities Exchanges with underlying electronic warehouse receipts will be held in CRA’s electronic platform and all transactions in e-warehouse receipts will be conducted on this platform with consideration to CRA’s vast experience and know-how in this area. The system will enable producers to be immediately notified on electronic warehouse receipts created in their accounts as they deliver their products to licensed warehouses. Producers will be able to trade their products and easily transfer them or use them as collaterals. The project will foster the development of derivatives markets on commodities and integrate the agricultural industry and capital markets. In this context, the software and tests have been finalized in April 2011 for the issuance of electronic warehouse receipts and their treatment in legal transactions. The service will go live following the regulations of the Ministry of Customs and Commerce.

e-DATA Capital Markets Data Bank Project aims at gathering, analyzing, modeling and presentation of all data concerning our capital markets, particularly detailed data on investors and securities kept in the Central Dematerialization System (CDS), from a single source to make such data available to regulatory and supervisory bodies and other governmental institutions to be used in decision-making mechanisms, to rating agencies in their analyses of the Turkish capital market and to academia. Another aspect of this project will be the distribution of all data produced in the Turkish capital markets through CRA in a secure, consistent and correct manner. The final aim of the project is, besides establishing a central data warehouse for capital markets, to gather data sets from various related institutions, analyze and present them in econometric models, and publish the results of those analyses in international standards to raise the investment rating of Turkey to the deserved level. Moreover, establishing indices such as Investor Confidence Index, Investor Expectation Index and Attachment Index and financial indicators, developing and testing algorithms, and publishing all studies as articles in national and international journals is within the project’s scope.

According to the Article No. 1524 of the new Turkish Commercial Law which will be effective by July 2012 joint stock companies are required to open web sites and disclose stated information and documents on those web sites.

The company information portal that will be developed based on the legally required information and documents to be disclosed by hundreds of thousands of companies will integrate with company web sites. CRA develops the project to enable companies to publish information and documents initially on the e-Company portal, integrate those information and documents with company web sites, provide required security levels, enable access from a single source and consistency, and establish data transmission to the Central Registry Number System (MERSIS) infrastructure. In this way, all documents that companies are required to publish on their web sites will be gathered in a single center and presentation of data and information on all companies in Turkey on specific criteria will be provided in a safe manner.

The portal will go live in July 2013 with the completion of software development stage following the regulations of the Ministry of Customs and Commerce.

Currently, the Turkish Government Debt Securities are held at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey on a financial institution basis. CRA, with the changes which have been made, has developed an infrastructure that allows the Turkish Government Debt Securities to be kept on an investor basis. The project will go live in July 2012 with the completion of system updates, trainings and tests with respect to the decision of the Capital Markets Board.

The PDP-CDS integration will end the transmission of data on corporate actions such as rights issues, dividend distributions and general assembly meetings in two different formats and enable issuers to direct their messages only to the PDP. As such, all issuer sourced information will be centrally held in the PDP system which will become the primary source of information. Through the PDP-CDS integration it will be sufficient for issuers to send all related information to the PDP system, and CRA member institutions and investors will be able to receive issuer messages compatible with international formats through the SWIFT integration with Takasbank. The first phase of the project, straight through processing of corporate actions notifications (issuer-to-investor) in SWIFT formats, will be completed in 2012. In this way, CRA will be among the first CSDs in the world that have achieved STP in corporate actions operations.

The ISE, CRA and Takasbank support the development of the capital markets in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, the two FEAS (Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges) member countries. CRA is planning to contribute to the operational processes of capital market institutions in both countries by its advanced technical infrastructure in custody systems and vast experience in this area.

The ongoing project between CRA and the Ministry of Justice on the integration of UYAP and CRA systems will enable users to process judicial writings on the electronic environment. Fast and secure communication between institutions will be achieved with this project.

CRA and the Ministry of Industry and Trade continue to work together on the integration between the CRA system and the MERSIS. The documents requested from institutions that apply for CRA membership such as articles of association, by laws of funds, list of authorized signatures, commercial registration certificate, and operating certificate will be retrieved by CRA from the MERSIS when the project is finalized. Users should enter some information on investors to the CRA system in order to open investor accounts. The integration will enable users to open investor accounts for legal entities by only entering the MERSIS number of those entities to the system. One further aspect of the project in the near future is providing online general assembly notifications, and also the confirmation and archiving of general assembly resolutions. The registry process for general assembly meetings, which will be held on an electronic platform through CRA’s e-GENERAL ASSEMBLY system, will also be conducted simultaneously through CRA with the planned integration.