BE Magazine - August 2026

Banking Scale s y s - tem can be exceptionally safe and still become strategically weaker. It can be highly profitable and still become dangerously fragile. The objective is to achieve both re- silience and productive capacity. For central banks, that means cali- brating regulation to actual risks while preserving the ability of banks to support economic growth. For governments, it means creating deeper capital markets and reducing unnecessary structural fragmenta- tion. For banks, it means improving cost efficiency, technology deployment, gov- ernance and strategic scale rather than assuming regulation alone ex- plains competitive weakness. And for regional institutions, it means recognizing that financial integration is increasingly part of economic competitiveness. Twenty-five years ago, Europe ap- peared to possess a permanent place at the summit of global banking. The subsequent reversal should caution every financial centre against assum- ing that institutional scale is perma- nent. Financial power compounds. So does financial weakness. The bank- ing systems that will lead the next decade will not necessarily be those with the largest balance sheets, the light- est regulation or even the highest capital ratios. They will be those that combine resilience, scale, profitabil- ity, deep markets and the capacity to mobilize capital efficiently. For Arab banking leaders, that is the strategic opportunity. The region does not need to choose between stability and ambition. It must build institutions capable of de- livering both. Because in the coming era of global finance, the central question will no longer be simply who has the safest banks. It will be who possesses the financial ISSUE 212 AUGUST 2026 the BANKING EXECUTIVE 45