MEAB injects a bit of youth to its boardroom
Ali Hejeij has plans to boost MEAB’s size and scope
Their corporate narrative is what Wikipedia might call “a stub”, or an article in need of expansion. But when Middle East and Africa Bank (MEAB) implement an interactive timeline in the history section of its online identity, the months of June and July 2015 will carry pivotal content.
Within the space of 10 days starting June 15, the mid-sized bank, which holds $1.5 billion in deposits and ranks 15th in the Lebanese banking sector in that category (2014 figures), welcomed a young new chairman who is also the bank’s new majority shareholder and a seasoned Lebanese banker with 30 years of experience as a general manager. The new leadership duo, Chairman Ali Hejeij and GM Nabih Haddad, lost no time embarking on a review of the bank’s business plan and strategy that was in full swing by end of June. While doing so, MEAB management lit the boosters on a new image building effort and proactive communications approach with a July 15 dinner for Lebanese media bigwigs. In between, the bank’s new leaders even found time to open a new retail branch, MEAB’s 21st, on Beirut’s Corniche Mazra.
The intense frenzy of the period was to a very significant (but not fully quantifiable) degree involuntary. It had been triggered in early June by a measure originating in the United States’ treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, under which Lebanese citizen Kassem Hejeij – Ali Hejeij’s father and then chairman of MEAB – was put on a list of persons alleged to be involved in financing of terrorism. In Kassem’s case, the accusation was consorting with Hezbollah.