Banque Misr
Egyptian bank
Banque Misr S.A.E. (Egyptian Arabic: بنك مصر ش.م.م.) is a major Egyptian bank, one of Egypt's big five banks. Founded in 1920, the bank has branch offices in all of Egypt's governorates, and currency exchange and work permit offices for foreign workers in Egypt. It was co-founded by economist Talaat Harb Pasha, industrialist Joseph Aslan Cattaui Pasha and Joseph Cicurel. The government of the United Arab Republic nationalized the bank in 1960.
History
The idea of a national bank of Egypt dates to at least the days of Muhammad Ali, who ordered the establishment of a bank with 700,000 piastres shortly before he became ill and died. Amin Shumayyil wrote an article in favor of the idea on April 26, 1879 in the newspaper Al-Tijara; although a number of Egyptian dignitaries met to discuss the project, the conflict between the Khedive Isma'il Pasha and the National Assembly and subsequent ʻUrabi revolt doomed the idea this time. Revolt leader Ahmed ʻUrabi's friend Wilfrid Scawen Blunt reports in his memoirs that Urabi had envisioned a “credit bank” for farmers.
Omar Lotfi Bey, a member of the Watani Party and Vice-President of the School of Law (now part of Cairo University) revived the idea in lectures at the Universities’ Club beginning on November 1, 1908, but his suggestions of using German and Italian assistance and credit were politically controversial.
Joseph Cattaui and Talaat Harb co-founded Banque Misr in 1920. Talaat had published books in 1907 and 1911 calling for the founding of a national bank with Egyptian financing.
“Banque Misr” enters the record as egyptian bank. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Banque, Misr and Egyptian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2060638. VIAF identifies the subject as 144268580. The Library of Congress control number is n82079273. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1960, 1879 and 1908.
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This entry incorporates text from “Banque Misr” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.