Bank of Alexandria
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Bank of Alexandria is one of the largest banks in Egypt. It has a market share of almost 7% and had assets of 5.2 billion euros (US$6.5 billion) as of June 30, 2006.
[edit] History
- 1864 The English overseas bank, Anglo Egyptian Bank was founded.
- 1924 Anglo Egyptian Bank merged with The Colonial Bank (est. 1836) and the National Bank of South Africa (est. 1891) to form Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas). Barclays had inherited the ownership of The Colonial Bank when it acquired the London Provincial and South Western Bank in 1918.
- 1957 The Egyptian government founded Bank of Alexandria (BAlex) to take over the operations of Barclays Bank DCO, which the Egyptian government had nationalized in 1956 after British and French troops attacked Egypt and occupied the Suez Canal during the Suez crisis.
- 1964 BAlex acquired Banque du Nile and Import-Export Bank of Egypt.
- 2006 The Egyptian government privatized BAlex. Sanpaolo IMI, the Italian bank whichh is itself being acquired by Banca Intesa, agreed to pay $1.6 billion for 80% of BAlex. This was the first privatization in Egypt of a fully government-owned bank.
