EBRD Brand Guidelines: A 1991 London Bank, a Democracy Clause & a Map on Three Continents

Eighteen months from idea to opening.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, known as the EBRD and in French as the BERD, is a multilateral development bank with its headquarters in London. The bank says the idea of a European development bank was first put forward by France’s President François Mitterrand in October 1989, and that a mere 18 months passed between that proposal and its opening for business in London in April 1991. Its purpose, in its own words, was to help build “a new, post-Cold War era in central and eastern Europe.”

The legal steps are set out in an explanatory memorandum that HM Treasury laid before the UK Parliament in December 2023. The Agreement Establishing the EBRD, the bank’s treaty, was signed by its founding members in May 1990 and entered into force on 28 March 1991; after an inaugural meeting in London from 15 to 17 April 1991, the Board of Governors authorised the bank to begin operations. French Wikipedia dates the signing, in Paris, to 29 May 1990, and the inauguration to 15 April 1991. The United Kingdom joined as a founding member, and the memorandum describes it as the joint second-largest shareholder.

The European Investment Bank took part from the start: its own timeline lists it as a founding member of the EBRD in May 1990, and the EBRD still counts the EIB and the European Union among its shareholders. English Wikipedia warns readers not to confuse the two. They are separate bodies: the EIB is owned by the member states of the European Union, while the EBRD’s owners come from five continents.

A mandate written in at the founding.

The EBRD describes its mandate as unusual for a development bank. It assists only countries “committed to and applying the principles of multi-party democracy [and] pluralism,” it says, and its guiding principle since the early 1990s has been to further “market-oriented economies and the promotion of private and entrepreneurial initiative.” The bank says its support for the private sector should exceed three-quarters of its financing each year, and that a commitment to “environmentally sound and sustainable development” was made explicit at its founding.

Its tools, as the bank lists them, include project finance, equity, support for start-ups and small businesses, and policy and legal-reform advice, across sectors such as energy, agribusiness, municipal infrastructure and transport. Its early years, it says, went on banking reform, price liberalisation, privatisation and legal frameworks for property rights, and on the start of its work at the Chornobyl site in Ukraine.

The bank’s map has grown in stages. Its first countries of operation were in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; by 2023, HM Treasury’s memorandum says, it worked in 38 countries, including Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean. At its Annual Meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on 18 May 2023, the governors approved an amendment to Article 1 of the treaty allowing a “limited and incremental” expansion to sub-Saharan Africa and Iraq, with lending aimed to begin in 2025, the memorandum says. French Wikipedia records that Benin and Côte d’Ivoire were accepted as members in October 2023, the first from sub-Saharan Africa.

Membership has roughly doubled. French Wikipedia counts 38 shareholders in 1990 and 76 in July 2025; the bank’s own history page now gives 77 countries from five continents, plus the European Union and the EIB, and names recent members including China, India, Iraq, Nigeria and Kenya. The bank now describes itself as working across three continents.

Design and documentation.

Development banks are owned by their member countries and economies rather than by private shareholders, and their websites put that ownership up front. The Asian Development Bank lists its 69 members with the year each one joined; the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank publishes a register of regional, non-regional and prospective members with their subscriptions and voting power. For these institutions the shareholder list is part of the brand, set out as openly as a logo.

Names travel in several languages. ADB’s website runs in English, Japanese and Chinese, with some country pages in other languages, and most of these lenders are known by short sets of initials that have to read the same on a loan document in one country and a project sign in another. The palettes in this group of guides lean on deep blues, greens and teals, chosen here as our own unofficial interpretations rather than official colours.

Their websites are organised around what they finance and where. ADB’s menus divide its work by region and subregional programme and separate public- from private-sector financing, which can take the form of loans, guarantees or equity; the AIIB sorts its project list by status, from proposed to approved, on hold or cancelled, and by sovereign-backed and nonsovereign-backed financing. These project databases are where a reader can follow a single road, power line or water scheme from proposal onward.

Accountability is presented as part of the same identity. ADB lists an Accountability Mechanism and Independent Evaluation among its pages; the AIIB has its Project-affected People’s Mechanism, approved in 2018. Alongside annual reports and financial statements, these evaluation pages and complaint routes are where the banks set out, in their own words, how their projects are reviewed.

Seven presidents and a tower in Canary Wharf.

The EBRD has had seven presidents, according to its website: Jacques Attali from 1991, Jacques de Larosière from 1993, Horst Köhler from 1998, Jean Lemierre from 2000, Thomas Mirow from 2008, Sir Suma Chakrabarti from 2012 and Odile Renaud-Basso from 2020. Its governance has three tiers, English Wikipedia says: a Board of Governors with a representative of each member, a Board of Directors of 23 members elected by the governors, and the president and staff.

Its address has changed. The bank says its headquarters are now in London’s Canary Wharf, officially opened by King Charles III in March 2023; HM Treasury’s memorandum also dates the inauguration to 2023. English Wikipedia records that the bank was drawn to the City of London at the start by a special grant from HM Treasury.

Its record includes project decisions, given here by date and outcome. English Wikipedia records that a 2011 loan to North Macedonia’s electricity utility for a dam at Boskov Most was cancelled by the bank in January 2017, when it said the conditions for disbursement had not been met. Complaints about projects go to the bank’s Independent Project Accountability Mechanism, which its website lists alongside its evaluation and sanctions systems.

The bank’s public language is consistent: “transition,” “countries of operation,” “three continents” and “the EBRD regions” recur across its pages, and its website carries a project finder and a Transition Report from its Office of the Chief Economist.

For a design guide, the EBRD shows how an institution born at one moment in history can keep its name while its map grows across three continents. Compare EIB, one of its founding shareholders, and World Bank, the Washington lender of the Bretton Woods system. For this guide we use a deep navy and a teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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