Is it time for a major Bank to acquire the Egyptian Arab Land Bank?!

Since about a century and a half ago, specifically in 1880, the Egyptian Arab Land Bank was established, and the oldest Egyptian bank that was established. Its first aim was to contribute to the development of the local agricultural sector by providing loans to agricultural landowners to improve the productivity of their land, drive the Egyptian economy and achieve the concepts of communicating with all segments of the community, to activate their productive and economic resources and develop the construction movement and national development.

Since its inception, the Bank has achieved strong growth, becoming one of the largest specialized banks in the region. However, it has experienced a dramatic deterioration in recent years, especially in the last two decades. The Bank's brightness has been absent and has fallen apart so strongly that it has become a mere memory of old generations and has lost its periods of strength while the new generations may be surprised that it is still existing.

The continued decline recorded by the Bank is due to many reasons, first of all that the special circumstances in which it was established no longer exist, and successive administrations have not sought to make it more flexible, developed and in keeping with the different situations of the banking sector.

This makes the Bank's continued identity of being committed to real estate activities and mortgages inappropriate for the current market, especially as almost all banks outperform it even its specialized counterpart such as the Housing and Development Bank, which has begun to expand from a bank specializing in real estate to a comprehensive bank.

This raises questions about finding meaningful solutions, but the most useful solution currently from experiences similar to the Bank's, perhaps lies in the acquisition or integration of a major bank such as the National Bank of Egypt, taking into account the elimination of its institutional identity or taking it as a step in Mortgage Finance, is it time?!

For more about Egyptian Arab Land Bank and its most notable achievements, click More