When Atef Ebeid became Egypt's prime minister in November last year and gave responsibility for the banking sector to Youssef Boutros Ghali, former economy minister and IMF staffer, the cheers could be heard across Cairo. Here at last was an administration that understood how the financial markets worked and would sweep away the old guard holding up the modernization of the industry.
No one was more pleased - or so it seemed - than Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, the chairman of the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), the country's largest bank. An old friend of Ebeid, he had been calling for the sector to be reformed for years and was an enthusiastic supporter of privatization.
In an up-beat interview with a local paper just after Boutros Ghali's appointment, he predicted a "faster rhythm" to the pace of change and stated that it was his ambition to end his career by overseeing the sale of shares in state-owned NBE.
Many bankers speculated that the first head to roll would be that of Ismail Hassan, the 60 year old governor of the central bank. Earlier in the year, Hassan had been widely criticized, notably by Aziz, for restricting access to dollars in order to prop up the Egyptian pound - an act that made it difficult for foreign investors to repatriate capital.