Al Arab's CIB grows against the grain

Behind Hisham Ezz Al Arab’s desk at the Commercial International Bank headquarters in Giza, among the usual paraphernalia of flags and family photos and portentous front pages of Time magazine, is an unusual picture. It’s a man with his back to the lens holding an axe across his shoulders, with the title: ‘PREPARATION’. Beneath it is a message: ‘If you have a day to chop down a tree, spend half a day sharpening the axe.’

Al Arab, chairman and managing director of Egypt’s biggest private-sector bank since 2002, likes the image because it’s somewhat un Egyptian. Lately, in particular, preparation hasn’t really been the watchword in Egypt, so much as action, sometimes without fully thinking through the consequences. Since uprisings began against president Hosni Mubarak in January 2011, the country has undergone two separate revolutions, the trials and imprisonment of two successive premiers – one with a death penalty – and waves of differing approaches to policy, reform and religion. 

Yet Egypt today looks, with some reservations, to be pointing in the right direction, with rating agencies revising upwards rather than downwards a government apparently committed to fiscal reform and something approaching political stability.