Mashreq Brand Guidelines: Bank of Oman’s 1993 Rename and the Sunrise-Orange Flare

A Dubai bank older than the UAE.

Mashreq began in Dubai in 1967 as the Bank of Oman. Arabic Wikipedia says it was established under a decree from the Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, four years before the United Arab Emirates was formed in 1971; English Wikipedia also gives 1967 and the Bank of Oman name. The bank calls itself the oldest bank in the UAE, and Gulf News described it in 2019 as the country’s oldest privately owned bank.

Its first branch opened in Deira in 1967, Arabic Wikipedia says, followed by a second across Dubai Creek in Bur Dubai and then branches in Al Ain and Abu Dhabi. After 1971 it opened a branch in Doha, and by 1976 it had ten branches at home; a head office in Deira followed a year later.

From 1978, the same article says, the bank turned outward, with business in Egypt, Pakistan, London and Hong Kong, and in 1983 it opened a branch in New York. Arabic Wikipedia also credits it with the UAE’s first cash machine, in 1983, and with early Visa-linked credit cards. In a 2019 interview with Gulf News, Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, its long-serving chief executive, listed the first ATMs, debit and credit cards, consumer loans and chip-based cards among the bank’s firsts in the country.

Arabic Wikipedia adds that branches in Kalba, Dibba and Umm Al Quwain gave the bank a presence in all seven emirates by the end of the 1970s; that it opened a training centre, which began as a library, in 1981; and that by 1983 it had become the first bank in the region connected to Visa’s global network. Later steps in the same account include a chip-based smart card in 2004, ten branches in Egypt during 2008 and operations in Kuwait from 2009.

In 1993 the Bank of Oman became Mashreqbank, Arabic Wikipedia says. The new name is the Arabic word for the east, where the sun rises, and the bank itself glosses it as “place of sunrise.” Its legal name today is Mashreqbank PSC, regulated by the Central Bank of the UAE, while the brand is simply Mashreq.

Rise Every Day.

Mashreq’s present identity dates from September 2022. In a press release dated 21 September, the bank announced a new brand positioning, “Rise Every Day,” and a logo refresh that, in its words, “retains the flare icon from Mashreq brand heritage but simplifies, brightens, and modernizes its implementation.” The refresh removed the blue from the mark and concentrated on what the bank called a “sunrise orange” palette, chosen to evoke the meaning of the name. The release also described an “orange thread” running through its materials, a bright, sunny tonality and “authentic imagery,” with a campaign built around ambassadors whose stories would be released in phases, digital first.

The same release framed the change as strategy. Mashreq said it would adopt “challenger brand status” and build a banking-as-a-service model, in which a bank offers its accounts, payments and other functions to other businesses through digital platforms. Its chairman said the line was “a statement of intent,” and group chief executive Ahmed Abdelaal said the identity reflected a new direction aimed at deeper and more personal connections with customers and partners.

Digital banking runs through the brand. In his 2019 Gulf News interview, Al Ghurair described Mashreq Neo, its app-based bank, as the UAE’s first digital bank, and said the bank had launched NeoBiz, a digital bank for small businesses, that September. English Wikipedia says Mashreq NEO serves residents of the UAE and Egypt. The bank’s website lists Mashreq Gold, Private Banking and Mashreq Al Islami, its Islamic banking arm, among its services; Arabic Wikipedia names its Islamic products as including lease-based home finance and profit-sharing deposits, offered in place of interest-bearing loans and accounts.

Design and documentation.

Gulf banks present themselves in two scripts at once. Emirates NBD and QNB both pair a short English name with a full Arabic one — QNB’s Arabic name, بنك قطر الوطني, reads simply as Qatar National Bank — so an identity has to work in right-to-left Arabic and left-to-right Latin, often on the same card, sign or app screen. The guides in this series look at marks built from geometric forms or from Arabic calligraphy, at palettes of deep blue, green and gold, and at photography that moves between city skylines and heritage scenes.

They also look at how banks organise what they sell. Retail, private and corporate banking usually sit in separate sections of a bank’s website, and the larger groups add brands of their own: Emirates NBD runs Emirates Islamic as its Islamic bank and Liv as its digital bank, and QNB has launched a digital bank called ezbank in Egypt.

Islamic finance shapes much of that design work. Islamic banking avoids interest, so financing is usually arranged as a sale at an agreed mark-up, a lease or a partnership, and products are reviewed by a board of Sharia scholars. Product pages for Islamic accounts and financing therefore have to explain those structures in plain language.

Banks in the region also tie their brands to national plans and to sustainability. QNB links its sustainability work to Qatar National Vision 2030, according to Wikipedia, and Emirates NBD built a 2026 campaign around Emirati Women’s Day. Brand work now reaches beyond the logo too: in December 2025 QNB launched a sonic identity that blends the oud with modern synthesisers, Gulf Times reported. Each guide sets out what can be checked about one bank — its founding, its mergers and its owners — and treats the palette shown as our own interpretation.

A flare icon kept, the blue removed.

Leadership has changed little. Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair led the bank as chief executive for almost three decades before becoming chairman in October 2019, Gulf News reported that December, and he was still chairman when the 2022 identity was launched. Ahmed Abdelaal is group chief executive, the bank’s website says.

The network is wide for a Dubai bank. English Wikipedia says Mashreq operates in 14 countries with more than 6,000 staff, with corporate banking in Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and India, retail and corporate banking in Egypt, a restricted licence to pilot digital retail banking in Pakistan, and full-service branches in New York, London and Hong Kong. The same article says Brand Finance ranked Mashreq the fastest-growing banking brand in the Middle East in its Banking 500 ranking in 2024.

For a design guide, Mashreq shows how the meaning of a name can drive a palette: a sunrise, rendered as an orange flare, with the blue taken out. Compare Emirates NBD, another Dubai bank, and First Abu Dhabi Bank. For this guide we use a sunrise orange and a deep charcoal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Mashreq’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.