Bank of Beirut goes down under

ENAR

"I’m much happier in Beirut than in London or Sydney or Melbourne. We belong to our roots,” says Salim Sfeir, chairman of Bank of Beirut (BoB), Lebanon’s seventh largest bank. Sitting in the bank’s headquarters in downtown Beirut, Sfeir is freshly returned from his latest trip to Australia, a country his bank has taken a big bet on. Lebanon’s banks have been exploring expansion beyond their borders for a while now. To reduce the sovereign exposure and generate more lucrative returns some have set up shop in Iraq, Syria, Paris and Geneva, or looked to the African continent, including Egypt. BoB’s strategy was different; go where its counterparts were not present. And that’s when the bank set its sight on a country over 12,000 kilometers away.  Sfeir expects the bank’s balance sheet in Australia to outweigh that of Lebanon in the next five to 10 years. Currently one sixth of