With the brunt of the financial crisis bested by the end of 2008, all Lebanon had to fear was the aftershocks of everyone else’s financial earthquake. Lebanese bankers dodged the bullet of the sub-prime fallout and, under strict regulation from the Central Bank of Lebanon, avoided the structured products and derivatives that melted balance sheets all over the globe. But, in January of 2009, the worry was that lowered wages and layoffs in the Gulf and Europe would hurt the remittances and capital inflows on which Lebanon’s banks depend. “When we started the year, the whole world was speaking about the effect of the collapse of different investment banks and the collapse of the markets that happened at the end of 2008, and the effect they would have on the negative growth that was happening in the world,” said Saad Azhari, general manager of BLOM Bank. “In Lebanon there was
