6 NATIONAL BANK OF KUWAIT

Country: Kuwait Sales: $4.2 B

Profits: $1.3 B Assets: $90.2 B Market Value: $20.1 B

The National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) was established in 1952 when a prominent Kuwaiti merchant went to the British Bank of the Middle East to open a letter of guarantee for the amount of 10,000 Indian rupees. After this incident a group of Kuwaiti merchant families got together to form a bank, making it the first locally-owned bank in the Arabian Gulf region. NBK’s network includes subsidiaries and representative offices in Geneva, London, Paris, New York, Singapore and China, alongside its regional presence in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E and Turkey.