The 14-member board of directors of the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) after the two general meetings on Jan. 29, 2025. (Courtesy of ABL)
BEIRUT — No surprises were expected and no surprises occurred. In less than two hours, the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) amended its articles of association on Wednesday, then reappointed its president, Salim Sfeir, and its board of directors, adding two new members.
An initial special meeting was called to amend the bylaws to formerly expand the board of directors and authorize the chairman, Bank of Beirut CEO Salim Sfeir, to run for a third term, according to a press release relayed by the state-run National News Agency (NNA).
This first meeting was followed by an ordinary general meeting during which ABL approved its annual report for 2023, which had taken some time to be audited, according to a source at the association, before approving its accounts for the same year and its budget for 2025, and then holding a plebiscite on the 14 candidates for the 14 seats to be filled.
Alongside Salim Sfeir, ABL has reappointed Abdel Razzak Achour (Phoenicia Bank), Ghassan Assaf (BBAC), Saad Azhari (Blom Bank), Semaan Bassil (Byblos Bank), Khalil Debs (Bank Audi), Raya el-Hassan (Bankmed), Nadim Kassar (Fransabank), Tanal Sabbah (Lebanese Swiss Bank), Antoun Sehnaoui (SGBL), Joseph Torbey (Crédit Libanais) and Walid Raphaël (BLF).
Representatives of small banks
Marwan Kheireddine (AM Bank) and Raed Khoury (Cedrus Bank) now occupy the two additional seats they were campaigning for, in order to increase the representation of a group comprising some fifteen small banks on the ABL Board of Directors.
According to information confirmed on Tuesday by Marwan Kheireddine, the integration of these two seats had been, for over a year, the focus of negotiations between Salim Sfeir and AM and Cedrus banks. Another banking source, under the condition of anonymity, told L'Orient-Le Jour that part of ABL had been reluctant to include the AM Bank boss on its board for image reasons, pointing to the fact that he was indicted in France at the end of March 2023 in connection with the prosecution of former Banque du Liban (BDL) governor Riad Salame. On Tuesday, Kheireddine claimed he'd never heard such "rumors" concerning his inclusion on the board.
Following the announcement of the fourteen candidates, Sfeir addressed the assembly, advocating in particular cooperation with the new president, Joseph Aoun, elected on Jan. 9 after more than two years of vacancy, and Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam. He also called for a “dialogue on financial issues” regarding reforms capable of “saving the national economy, ensuring the continuity of banks and protecting the rights of depositors.”
Sfeir was first elected to the ABL Board of Directors in June 2019, before being re-elected in 2021. The body's mandate was then extended from June 2023 due to the country's exceptional circumstances, marked by more than five years of crisis, during which the bank deposits of a majority of Lebanese were unilaterally frozen without recourse, prompting some customers to take legal action both in Lebanon and abroad, with varying degrees of success.
Last September, Saradar Bank became the first Lebanese bank to be ordered by a French court to reimburse one of its customers. In London, Bank Audi and SGBL (Société générale de banque au Liban) had already received a court ruling against them in the early 2020s, to name but two examples.
Largely taken to task by the popular protest that began on Oct. 17, 2019, ABL saw its premises ransacked in Beirut. In 2022, the robbery of a Blom Bank branch by Sali Hafez and her sister to recover deposits of their own, frozen by banking restrictions, was one of the most high-profile cases of the period, prompting banks to barricade themselves even further.
A majority of banks are technically bankrupt and have not been operating properly since the end of 2019. They also worry that they will have to bear the brunt of any restructuring needed to revive the national financial system. These establishments consider that it is the Banque du Liban — where they deposited several tens of billions of dollars in interest-bearing investments in the years preceding the crisis — that is responsible for the deposit freeze. This interpretation is far from unanimous in the public debate.