The Banking Executive Magazine - October 2023

Banking Star ARAB BANKER OF Experience is supposedly the matur- ing of judgment over time, forged by trial and error. A forty year career in regional, commercial and investment banking, mostly spent in a CEO or Board capacity across Egypt, the UK, Bahrain, the USA and the GCC, has given me an opportunity to witness and to closely interact with the recur- ring financial and political upheavals of the region as well as with the far reaching regulatory, technological and social transformations that have reshaped the global banking indus- try. In sharing points of relevance from this long journey, one must tread carefully between the Scylla of per- sonal nostalgia or historical trivia, and the Charybdis of regurgitating current fashionable industry trends or platitudes. Relevance, in my view, is only driven by the test of time through proven ability to generate sustainable value accretion, cur- rently and more importantly in the future. My themes have been chosen with these criteria in mind and solely represent the personal judgment (or lack thereof) of the writer. Banking, in all its forms, is a risky business, essentially based on third party trust and funding. It must there- fore balance its risk appetite and ac- tions to ensure deposit protection and readily available funds while generating sufficient returns to satisfy the demands – oftentimes excessive – of shareholders, management and other stakeholders. De-risked bank- ing – as postulated by regulators in the aftermath of every crisis – can only exist when these constituencies accept utility type risk-returns, and this has not, and is not likely to, hap- pen. ISSUE 178 OCTOBER 2023 the BANKING EXECUTIVE 37 Adel El-Labban Adel El-Labban was Group Chief Executive Officer of Ahli United Bank from 2000 until early 2023. Before that, he led Commercial International Bank in Egypt. In 2015, Mr. El-Labban received the Arab Bankers Asso- ciation’s annual award for Distinguished Service to Arab Banking. He has also received distinguished achievement awards from Euromoney and the Union of Arab Banks. He currently divides his time between Bahrain, London and Egypt.