Bank Audi Brand Guidelines: Beirut Since 1830, a 1962 Bank & a Group Refocused on Lebanon

An old family name, a modern company.

Bank Audi gives two dates for its origin. Its corporate profile says the bank was founded in 1830 and incorporated in its present form in 1962, as a Lebanese joint stock company, a société anonyme libanaise. English Wikipedia follows the same pair of dates: founded in 1830, incorporated as a bank only in 1962. The bank, in the legal form it has today, therefore dates from the early 1960s in Beirut, with a stated duration of 99 years.

The ownership began narrow and widened. The bank says its initial shareholders were members of the Audi family together with certain Kuwaiti investors, and that since 1983 the shareholder base has expanded to more than 1,500 holders of common shares and of global depositary receipts. The common shares, including those receipts, are listed on the Beirut Stock Exchange. In February 2019, English Wikipedia notes, the bank named The Bank of New York Mellon as successor depositary for its receipt programme.

Bank Audi grew through mergers. In 2004 it signed a merger agreement with Banque Saradar, and English Wikipedia records that the group was for a time known as Bank Audi Saradar. Abroad it built on a presence that the bank calls historic in Switzerland and France, and later added Egypt, Türkiye and the Gulf. Daily News Egypt reported in 2022 that the bank had entered the Egyptian market by acquiring Cairo Far East Bank in March 2006, then built a network of more than fifty branches there.

Selling units, returning home.

Since 2019 the group has become smaller and more focused. The first large step was Egypt. In January 2021 First Abu Dhabi Bank signed a final agreement to acquire all of Bank Audi Egypt, and on 22 April 2021 Arab News reported that the buyer had legal and regulatory approval to complete the purchase. Daily News Egypt reported in June 2022 that the legal merger with First Abu Dhabi Bank’s own Egyptian business had concluded, with the two operating as a single entity under the name FABMISR.

Türkiye followed. Odeabank, Bank Audi’s Turkish subsidiary, was established in 2012 and opened a remote branch called Bank’O in 2019, according to a joint statement; at the end of June 2024 it had 41 branches in 15 Turkish cities, the statement said. On 15 October 2024 the Abu Dhabi investment company ADQ and Bank Audi announced a definitive agreement for ADQ to acquire 96 per cent of Odeabank from a consortium led by Bank Audi, which also included the International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In that statement the bank said the sale would let it concentrate on its home market. On 27 March 2025 Bank Audi announced that the sale of its stake had been completed after approvals from Türkiye’s banking regulator and competition authority.

What remains is a group centred on Lebanon. The bank’s group-structure page lists Bank Audi sal and the factoring company SOLIFAC in Lebanon, Banque Audi (Suisse) and Bank Audi France in Europe, Audi Capital in Saudi Arabia, Bank Audi (Qatar), and a representative office in Abu Dhabi. As at the end of June 2026, the bank says, it had 38 branches in Lebanon and 1,691 employees across the group.

How banks in the region present themselves.

Banks across North Africa and the Levant often present themselves in more than one language at once. A single bank may carry an Arabic name, a French or English name and a set of initials, and use each in a different setting: Morocco’s Banque Populaire, for example, is also known as Chaabi and as BCP Group, while BMCE kept its initials as a byline after taking the name Bank of Africa in 2020. Websites in the region commonly offer Arabic, French and English versions side by side.

Colour does much of the work in these identities. Wordmarks in the region are frequently set in greens, blues and reds, and some banks explain their choices: Bank of Africa says its dark blue stands for the institution and its turquoise for modernity. The palettes in this guide are our own unofficial interpretations, not the banks’ specifications.

Product ranges tend to sit side by side. Many banks run Islamic or participative banking windows or subsidiaries beside their conventional ranges, as Bank of Africa does through Bank Al Karam, and their websites usually give separate pages to current accounts, cards, mobile apps and remittances, with sections aimed at nationals living abroad. Branch photography, city skylines and head-office towers are common on home pages and in reports.

Annual and sustainability reports are a large part of how these banks speak to investors, and several groups are listed on their national stock exchanges. This guide sets out what can be checked about each bank — when and where it was founded, who owns it, how its name has changed — and marks clearly what rests only on the bank’s own word.

A board, a law and a family name.

Bank Audi describes its home market in measured, legal terms. Its corporate profile notes the passage of Lebanon’s Bank Resolution Law in July 2025 and the cabinet’s approval of a draft Financial Gap Law in December 2025, which, the bank says, still awaited enactment by parliament. The bank says it keeps operational readiness for a move towards normal sector conditions and has used its foreign subsidiaries, naming Bank Audi France and Bank Audi Qatar, to provide medium-term finance to clients.

Leadership has returned to the family name. On 14 January 2026 the bank announced that its board, meeting the day before, had elected Sherine Audi as chair. The announcement said she had been a non-executive board member since April 2017 and had chaired the board of Bank Audi France since 2022. Recent releases also show the group adding services rather than markets: on 30 September 2025 Audi Capital, the Saudi subsidiary, launched Audi Tadawul, an online trading platform built with the fintech company GTN for wealthy individuals, institutions and family offices, at its offices in Riyadh.

For designers the name does much of the work. “Audi” here is the surname of the founding family, unrelated to the German car maker of the same name. The group uses it as a prefix across its subsidiaries, from Banque Audi (Suisse) and Bank Audi France to Audi Capital and Bank Audi (Qatar), and on its research arm, Audi Research.

For a design guide, Bank Audi shows how a bank with a nineteenth-century family date and a 1962 company can present continuity through a single surname while the group around it changes shape; compare it with Jordan’s Housing Bank and with QNB. For this guide we use a Beirut claret, sandstone and warm taupe with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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