Adventures In Banking

For years, Lebanese bankers were buoyant when talking about the potential for expansion throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. But even the best risk assessment teams couldn’t have predicted the ‘Arab Spring’, nor could they have anticipated it coinciding with Lebanon’s political vacuum. Now, caught between domestic stalemate and regional instability, Lebanon’s big banks are putting the brakes on their foreign conquests and talking conservatism and contingency planning. And while they may claim they still firmly believe in the MENA region’s fundamentals, many of the Lebanese alpha and beta banks are ogling new territories. Be it to diffuse the risk or make money off of it, Lebanese banks’ future expansion plans are as bold as they are chancy. Risky business In the first quarter of 2011, ratings and economic growth forecasts for troubled MENA countries crumbled. According to Merrill Lynch, Egypt’s real gross domestic product contracted by