Friday, March 09, 2007
Lebanese bank to open in Arbil
Business
(Financial Express) Byblos Bank, Lebanon’s third-largest lender, will open a branch in Iraq next month using the safety of the Kurdish north as a platform for expansion into a country that holds 10% of the world’s oil reserves. “Iraq is very important, there is huge potential there,’’ chairman Francois Bassil, 72, said in an interview in his office in Beirut March 6. Byblos will open its branch in Arbil, capital of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, because it’s more secure than other parts of the country, he said.
Byblos Bank, which has about $6.2 billion of deposits, plans to start in Iraq by financing trade and infrastructure projects. It also aims to become an intermediary for Iraqi banks trying to do business overseas, Bassil said. A total 27 domestic banks operate in Iraq, seven of them state-owned, the Central Bank of Iraq says on its web site. HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest bank by market value, in 2005 said it won regulatory approval to buy 75% o Baghdad-based Dar el-Salaam Investment Bank as a means to return to Iraq for the first time since Iraq’s banks were nationalized in 1964.
Labels: Arbil, Byblos Bank, Lebanon
