Banque Misr celebrates 95th anniversary

This year marks the 95th anniversary of the establishment of the first Egyptian bank to be created solely with Egyptian money, Banque Misr, by the economist Talaat Harb.

The idea behind the bank’s foundation started at the beginning of the 20th century, when Talaat Harb proposed the idea of founding a national bank in a newspaper article published on 1 October 1907. In the article, he demanded that Egypt should be for Egyptians, and called for establishing the bank to invest the country’s wealth and meet the needs of Egyptians.

In April 1911, Harb presented research on the issue in the first Egyptian conference, with some points proposed to establish for all Egyptians a “nation’s bank”. At the end of the conference, it was decided that Harb would travel to Europe to study the idea, and conduct a comparative study on national banks and how they operate in European countries.