UK Firm With Tera Ties Had Record Year Before Turkey Fund Crisis Kerim Karakaya and Donal Griffin A brokerage in London with links to Tera Yatirim Menkul Degerler AS, the firm at the center of Turkey’s fund meltdown, had a record 2025 fueled by a 283% surge in stock trading income. Gildencrest Capital Ltd. generated revenue of £12.5 million last year, the most since it was founded in 2011, and reported a record profit of £2.8 million, according to filings with the UK Companies House. Previously known as Tera Europe Ltd., the London-based firm is part-owned by Tera Chairman and founder Emre Tezmen and his father Oguz, filings show.

Turkish authorities this week arrested Tezmen, two Tera board members and some executives as part of a sweeping move against alleged wrongdoing in the nation’s asset-management industry. Regulators will be liquidating billions of dollars held in funds overseen by firms including Istanbul-based Tera to crack down on what Justice Minister Akin Gurlek has described as “Ponzi-like schemes” that wiped out citizens’ savings. "Gildencrest has no commercial relationship with any of the funds impacted by the matters under investigation in Turkey," a spokesperson for the firm said in an emailed statement. "Gildencrest is run by its own board and management team, who make all operational and commercial decisions; Mr. Tezmen holds no executive role and plays no part in the running of the firm." A spokesperson for Tera declined to comment on its relationship with Gildencrest. Tezmen has denied any wrongdoing.

In a Sept. 16 post on X, he described the run on the firm’s funds as a "speculative attack of an extraordinary and unprecedented scale." Gildencrest Chief Executive Officer David A. George — a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader — and another Gildencrest director, Burak Akbulut, are listed as having "significant control" over the firm along with Tezmen and his father, filings show. Still, there are multiple links between the two firms beyond Tezmen’s shareholding.

Akbulut and another Gildencrest director, Fatma Nurcan Tasdelenler, have both held senior roles at Tera entities, according to their Linked In profiles. Gildencrest owed 15.1 million lira ($309,000) to Tera at the end of 2024, according to a company filing. Tasdelenler ceased being a director of Gildencrest on Tuesday, filings show.

She didn’t respond to a request for comment made through her Linked In profile. Gildencrest has embraced trading in stocks, moving away from a previous focus on currencies, according to the 2025 accounts, which were signed off in April. Equity trading income soared 283% last year and now accounts for the bulk of the firm’s business.

Trading volumes in Gildencrest’s capital-markets business — which includes equities — increased more than 500% to £4.8 billion, filings show. Gildencrest’s fees from customers are “primarily denominated” in lira and dollars, filings show. The “geographic concentration” of the firm’s clients is a “source of risk,” according to the filings.

A spokesperson for the Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates Gildencrest in the UK, declined to comment. Tera, which operates an investment bank and an asset-management unit, had been the talk of Istanbul’s financial circles for minting gains that seemed impossible by normal standards. Its flagship investment fund returned more than 66,000% over a three-year period, fueled by a strategy of pouring billions of lira into a tight circle of related companies and amplifying the bets with borrowed cash.