CIB Egypt Brand Guidelines: Chase National Bank of 1975, a 1987 Rename & yomo

A 1975 joint venture of two banks.

CIB Egypt is the everyday name of Commercial International Bank – Egypt, a bank that began as a joint venture. English and Arabic Wikipedia both say it was set up in 1975 under the name Chase National Bank of Egypt, owned 51 per cent by the National Bank of Egypt and 49 per cent by Chase Manhattan Bank.

The partnership ended in 1987. Both Wikipedia editions say Chase decided to sell its shares, the National Bank of Egypt raised its holding to 99.9 per cent, and the bank took the name Commercial International Bank – Egypt, shortened in daily use to CIB. Over the following years the National Bank of Egypt sold down its stake through a series of public offerings, Wikipedia says, until it held 18.7 per cent; in 2006 a consortium led by Ripplewood Holdings bought that remaining stake.

The shareholder list kept changing. In July 2009 the investor Actis bought 9.1 per cent and became the largest single shareholder, according to Wikipedia; it sold 2.6 per cent through the Egyptian Exchange in March 2014 and its remaining 6.5 per cent to a Fairfax financial-services company in May 2014. Wikipedia also records that in late 2015 CIB took over the shares of Citibank’s Egyptian business through the Egyptian Exchange and brought its branches under its own management.

The most recent large change came in April 2022, when Alpha Oryx, an Abu Dhabi investment company, bought a stake. Daily News Egypt reported on 20 April 2022 that the company had told the Egyptian Exchange its plans would not harm the bank’s management or the interests of its clients. Arabic Wikipedia puts the holding at 18.5 per cent, which made Alpha Oryx the largest shareholder. At the bank’s general assembly in March 2026, two board members represented Alpha Oryx Limited, Daily News Egypt reported, and the assembly approved a new three-year term for the chief executive running to March 2029.

From Cairo to Nairobi.

CIB presents itself as a private-sector bank, and press coverage uses the same framing. Daily News Egypt called it “the largest private-sector bank in Egypt” in December 2025, and the bank’s own announcement of August 2026 describes it as “Egypt’s leading private-sector bank” with more than 50 years behind it. Arabic Wikipedia describes a range that serves individuals, wealthy clients, institutions and companies of every kind.

Its first move outside Egypt was to Kenya. In April 2020 CIB bought 51 per cent of Mayfair Bank in Nairobi, and in January 2023 Daily News Egypt reported that it had announced the acquisition of the whole bank, describing the Kenyan deal as its first acquisition outside Egypt. English Wikipedia says the Kenyan bank now trades as CIB Kenya. CIB also trains Kenyan bankers: in December 2025 Daily News Egypt reported the graduation of a third group of 22 young Kenyan professionals from its East Africa Banking Credit Programme, run with the Kenya Bankers Association under an agreement signed early in 2025, with a ceremony in Nairobi.

At home, the recent launches lean digital. In October 2025 the bank introduced the CIB Talabat Mastercard credit card with the delivery platform Talabat and Mastercard, aimed, Daily News Egypt reported, at “Egypt’s growing digital generation” and in particular at food and grocery delivery users. On 20 August 2026 CIB announced that it had received preliminary approval from the Central Bank of Egypt to establish yomo, a digital bank, under the digital-bank framework Egypt introduced in 2023. The bank said yomo would go through technology checks, cybersecurity testing and compliance work before launch, and that the launch of its services remains subject to regulatory approval.

Design and documentation.

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 name shortened to three letters.

The name has moved in stages. The 1975 bank carried its partner’s name, Chase National Bank of Egypt; from 1987 the full title was Commercial International Bank – Egypt; and today the bank and the press use the short forms CIB and CIB Egypt, along with the hyphenated CIB-Egypt that Daily News Egypt used in its 2023 and 2025 Kenya reports. Its Arabic name, البنك التجاري الدولي, heads the Arabic Wikipedia entry beside the CIB abbreviation. The Kenyan arm carries the same three letters as CIB Kenya, while the new digital bank has a separate lower-case name, yomo; in the August 2026 announcement its chief executive said more about the yomo brand would be revealed later in the year.

Ownership is the thread through the story: a joint venture of two banks, then a bank almost wholly held by the National Bank of Egypt, then a listed company whose shareholders have included a Ripplewood-led consortium, Actis, a Fairfax company and Alpha Oryx, according to Wikipedia and Daily News Egypt. The palette below is our own interpretation.

For a design guide, CIB Egypt shows how a bank can keep one short name through several owners while giving a new venture, such as yomo, a name of its own. Compare National Bank of Egypt, its founding shareholder, and QNB Egypt, another Egyptian bank that changed its name with its owner. For this guide we use a deep navy, a steel blue and a warm sand with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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