Crisis management at the central bank

For more than a decade, Banque du Liban (BDL), Lebanon’s central bank, and the Banking Control Commission (BCC), an independent administrative body established at the BDL in 1967 to supervise banks, have maintained a stable banking and financial system. Both have provided the banking sector with strong support, set up a good regulatory environment to enhance the reliability of the system, and have dealt swiftly and effectively with recent “crisis” situations, involving varying degrees of mismanagement at Credit Libanais in the late 80s, Inaash Bank in 1999 and Banque Libanaise pour le Commerce (BLC) in 2001. Most recently, it was forced to deal with the murky affair of the Al Madina Bank, the political implications of which, threatened to undermine the very fabric of the banking system. To its credit, the central bank emerged from the imbroglio with its integrity intact. The BCC, with its staff of over one hundred,