A Lebanese lender’s philosophy

Creditbank Chair Tarek Khalife explains his views on banking and the roots of his strategy to prioritize lending to the private sector. Last week, Executive published a longer piece about Creditbank.   The impression from our conversation on Creditbank is that you neither aim to be the richest banker in town nor are angling for the biggest bragging rights. Why are you a banker? I don’t regard myself only as a banker. If you think of yourself as a banker, you reduce yourself to calculating your margin on every transaction. I like to think of myself as a common denominator in the business world where people need a financier.   How do you define the difference?  Being a financier is more than being a banker. People think of a banker as someone who gets a lick of every deal that passes under his nose. This is not the picture that I have.