Bank of Athens

The Bank of Athens was a bank in Athens, Greece. It was founded in 1893 and merged in 1999. It continued the name of an earlier but no longer operating Anglo-Greek bank that Michel Emmanuel Rodocanachi had established in the UK.

History

• 1894: Ep. Empeirikos, Al. Lambrinoudis, A. Kallergis, M. Iordanopoulos, and N. Triantafyllidis founded the Bank of Athens in 1893 with Greek, French, and English capital, and it apparently commenced operating in 1894.^[1] A key figure in the early bank was Jean (John) Pesmatzoglou, an Alexandrian private banker, who merged his bank with Bank of Athens, became chairman in 1896, and formed an alliance with Banque de l'Union parisienne in 1904.^[2] Pesmatzoglou's bank became a branch in Alexandria, Egypt, where there was a large community of Greeks.
• 1895: The Bank established branches in London, Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria, and Khartoum.
• 1906: Bank of Athens acquired Industrial Credit Bank (est. 1873).
• 1910: The bank had branches in Crete at Chania, Candia, and Rethymno, Khartoum in the Sudan, and Trebizond and Samsoun in the Ottoman Empire.^[3]
• 1921: Bank of Athens opened a representative office in New York.
• 1922: By this time, the Bank of Athens had branches throughout Greece, as well as in Limassol and Nicosia in Cyprus, Alexandria, Cairo, and Port Said in Egypt, Galata, Stamboul and Pera in Constantinople, and London and Manchester in England.^[4]
• 1923: The Turkish government seized the Bank's branch in Constantinople as a branch of an enemy bank.
• 1926: Bank of Athens converted its NY agency to a subsidiary, Bank of Athens Trust Company.
• 1930: National Bank of Greece and Bank of Athens combined their activities in Egypt into a joint subsidiary, Banque Nationale de Grèce et d’Athénes.
• 1930s: The Bank of Athens operated branches in Korçë and Durrës in Albania.
• 1940s: During the Axis Occupation of Greece, Dresdner Bank assumed oversight of Bank of Athens.
• 1947: The Bank of Athens founded the South African Bank of Athens Limited to serve Hellenes residing in South Africa.
• 1953: Bank of Athens merged with National Bank of Greece to form the National Bank of Greece and Athens. Later the name reverted to the National Bank of Greece. The two banks merged their NY subsidiaries to form Atlantic Bank of New York.
• 1960: Egypt nationalized the foreign banks in the country. The National Bank of Egypt took over Banque Nationale de Grèce et d’Athénes, together with a number of other banks.
• 1992: Hanwha Bank (with Rabobank) bought 67% of Bank of Athens (formerly the Bank of Professional Credit) from NBG (which owned 75%), in a privatization.
• 1998: EFG Eurobank Ergasias, a member of the Latsis Group, bought 58% of the Bank of Athens' common stock from Hanwha Bank and 51% of its preference shares from the National Bank of Greece.
• 1999: EFG Eurobank Ergasias absorbed Bank of Athens and Bank of Crete.

References