Banque Misr Brand Guidelines: Talaat Harb’s 1920 Cairo Bank & the Misr Companies

An idea argued in books and carried by 126 shareholders.

Banque Misr opened in Cairo on 10 May 1920. Its moving spirit was Talaat Harb, an economist and entrepreneur who, English Wikipedia says, had published books in 1907 and 1911 calling for a national bank financed by Egyptians. Arabic Wikipedia adds that the First Egyptian Congress resolved in April 1911 that such a bank should be founded with Egyptian capital and sent Harb to study banks in Europe, and that the First World War then put the project off for several years.

Arabic Wikipedia describes the founding in detail. Harb persuaded 126 Egyptians to subscribe for 20,000 shares; a founding contract among eight of them was signed in March 1920; and the decree creating the joint-stock company Banque Misr was published in the official gazette, al-Waqa’i al-Misriyya, on 13 April 1920. The eight signatories included Ahmed Medhat Yakan Pasha, who became chairman, Youssef Aslan Cattaui Pasha, who became vice-chairman, and Harb himself as vice-president and managing director; the board also included Youssef Cicurel. English Wikipedia names Harb, Cattaui and Joseph Cicurel as co-founders. Harb spoke at the Cairo Opera House when the bank opened, and its first premises were on Sheikh Abu al-Sibaa Street.

The bank was built on a few stated principles. English Wikipedia lists them: all its dealings were in Arabic, Egyptians ran the bank, and share ownership was restricted to Egyptian citizens. The bank today describes itself as “the first wholly Egyptian-owned bank,” founded to invest national savings in economic and social development.

Printing, weaving, cinema and an airline.

Banque Misr did not stop at banking. Arabic Wikipedia says it founded 26 companies between 1920 and 1960, in spinning and weaving, insurance, transport, aviation and the film industry. English Wikipedia’s list of Harb’s projects includes Misr Printing House in 1922, the Misr Company for Acting and Cinema in 1925, the forerunner of Studio Misr, Misr Weaving in 1927 and Misr Air in 1932; the same article credits the bank with founding the country’s first national airline, EgyptAir. The bank’s own history page says it funded businesses in textiles, insurance, transport, aviation, entertainment and filmmaking.

It also went abroad early. In 1926–1927 it set up Banque Misr-France in Paris to serve Egyptian travellers to France, and around 1929 it joined a Lebanese partner to form Banque Misr-Syrie-Liban, English Wikipedia says; the bank has been active in Lebanon since 1929. Growth had limits. In 1939, the same source says, the bank had overextended itself and was reconstructed under new leadership, with Hafiz Afifi Pasha replacing Harb at its head.

In 1960 the government nationalised all banks in Egypt, foreign and domestic, including Banque Misr, the National Bank of Egypt, Alexbank and Banque du Caire. The next year Syria nationalised the banks operating there, including Banque Misr’s branches. In 1971 Banque Misr absorbed Banque de Port-Said, and after foreign banks were allowed back in the mid-1970s it formed joint ventures, among them Misr International Bank in 1976. It merged Misr Exterior Bank into itself in 2004, and in 2005 National Société Générale Bank, today QNB Egypt, acquired a majority stake in Misr International Bank, according to English Wikipedia.

How the region’s banks 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 national network and a UAE review.

Today the bank says it has more than 900 branches across Egypt and a network of branches, subsidiaries and representative offices in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. It launched the Banque Misr Wallet, a mobile-phone payment service, in March 2017, English Wikipedia says. The bank also says it was the first bank in Egypt and North Africa to obtain the PCI DSS 3.2.1 card-data certification, and it lists repeated Global Finance awards for its money market funds.

In August 2026 its UAE operations came under regulatory scrutiny. On 28 August the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed a rule that would revoke Banque Misr UAE’s correspondent banking access to US financial institutions, alleging that the branches had processed transactions for companies it linked to Iranian shadow-banking networks, according to a Treasury statement. The bank has five branches in the UAE, in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah, Khaleej Times reported. On 30 August the Central Bank of the UAE and the Central Bank of Egypt said in a joint statement that the branches would continue to operate as usual, a day after the UAE central bank said it would carry out a special and urgent examination of them; Banque Misr said on 30 August that all its UAE branches were working normally, Egypt Independent reported. On 22 September Gulf News reported that Banque Misr had announced a preliminary agreement for National Bank of Egypt to take over its UAE branches, subject to approval from the Central Bank of the UAE. The transfer was agreed in September 2026 and had not been completed at the time of writing.

For a design guide, Banque Misr shows how a bank can carry a founding idea, Egyptian capital and the Arabic language, through a century of nationalisation and reorganisation. Compare the National Bank of Egypt, the older Cairo bank founded in 1898, and QNB Egypt, which absorbed one of its joint ventures. For this guide we use a deep Cairo maroon, limestone and old gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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