Turkey's Borsa Istanbul flat at open

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose slightly by 0.16 percent, or 163.88 points, to open at 102,033.23 points on Friday.

On the last transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices gained 0.24 percent and 0.19 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the electricity sector index posted the best performance, up 0.80 percent, while the telecommunication sector index suffered the worst drop, down 0.23 percent.

On Thursday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 101,869.35, down 0.28 percent, or 288.54 points, with a 6.2 billion Turkish lira ($1.3 billion) trade volume.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate stood at 4.4570 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Friday, compared with 4.4550 at Thursday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate stood at 5.2630 by market open -- from 5.2600 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded for 6.0410 Turkish liras versus 6.0270 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil reached $79.41 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Friday. At the previous close, it topped the $80 level for the first time since October 2014.