After nearly 20 years as a leading investment banker in London, Hisham Ezz El Arab returned to the homeland and revolutionised the Egyptian banking sector as Chairman of Commer-cial International Bank. Here, he talks exclusively to Enigma’s Managing Editor Amy Mowafi about his love of banking, his love for Egypt…and his penchant for fly-fishing.
Our story starts with socks. A pair of woollen black socks pinned behind a pane of framed glass, in a pent-house office in Giza. And the story of the socks starts in a secluded little village in Iceland, where a small group of manly men are setting out on a fishing expedition. Except there’s a small problem. One of the guys, a man by the name of David M. Cote, doesn’t have a pair of socks thick enough to withstand the subzero temperatures. And cold feet are bound to put a damper on his enjoyment. And when you have the type of job that Mr. Cote has – high pressure and high power; when time-off to go fishing in Iceland is a rare and hugely valuable commodity, you really don’t need anything spoiling your fun, especially a lack of appropriate footwear. Well, it’s Cote’s lucky day. Because there’s an Egyp-tian in the group – a man by the name of Hisham Ezz El Arab – and if there’s one thing we all know about Egyptians, is that they revel in the opportunity to lend a helping hand, to demonstrate their inborn genetic generosity. So even though Ezz El Arab has never before met Cote in his life; has never, up till this moment, exchanged a single word with him, he gamely offers the frozen footed man a pair of his own thick and fuzzy, fishing-appropriate socks. Cote is effusive in his gratitude; intrigued as to why this dark-haired man, would lend him a pair of socks. If, for example, Ezz El Arab had known that Cote was the Chairman of the multi-billion dollar tech-nology services provider Honeywell, then perhaps it would make sense. A sort of, I warm your feet, you warm mine exchange. But Ezz El Arab didn’t know, didn’t care, and he really hadn’t done anything all that special…he was just, you know, being Egyptian. Later that day, both men, along with their woollen socks, are the only two in the group to catch any fish. Cote strikes up a friendship with Ezz El Arab, dubs the socks his lucky pair, and a few months lat-er, has them framed and sent to his office in Cairo with a pithy little thank you note. It’s a charming story. It’s a story that Hisham Ezz El Arab, the Chairman of Commercial International Bank (CIB), likes to tell. It’s a habit one notices of powerful men, this business of storytelling; anecdotes as life-lessons. Except this one’s an odd one, because when Ezz El Arab tells it, there really isn’t a moral to the story. He’s just sharing. But here’s what I get out of it (apart from the fact that Ezz El Arab has a penchant for fly-fishing in obscure desti-nations): Wherever Ezz El Arab has been and whatever he’s done – and he’s been plenty places and done plenty things – this business of being Egyptian remains at his core. And if it wasn’t for that constant connection to his roots, his career may have taken a very different path, and the landscape of Egypt’s banking sector may have taken a very different shape. Just over a decade ago, Ezz El Arab was the Managing Director of Deutsche Bank, London, and before that, Managing Director of JP Morgan, London. When you’re at the top of your game, in one of the world’s leading financial centres, surely there isn’t all that much incentive to come marching back to Cairo. Especially when the Egyptian economy is in dire straits and the bank-ing sector is being blamed for a large proportion of the country’s problems; when financial institutions are being torn to shreds for their mishandling of risk management and non-performing loans and other big, bad things that result in big, bad problems for the economy, for the country and for the Egyptian people. It’s hardly the most lucrative proposition. Yet, Ezz El Arab took it on, warts and all. And here’s why…On a frosty winter’s morning in December 1998, he gets a call from the then Chairman of CIB, Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, requesting a meeting. Naturally Ezz El Arab assumed the talk would revolve around some sort of collaboration. Instead Abdel Aziz dropped a bombshell. He wanted Ezz El Arab to give up his big shiny London life, and go work for CIB in Egypt. And he needed to find a way to convince him, so he played the patriot card. Even though Ezz El Arab had always been an investment banker – and the commercial banking sector is a very different machine – even though it would mean uprooting his wife and two sons, the “go back to Egypt, get back to your roots, and do your bit for the country” speech worked. It sealed the deal. A decade later, Ezz El Arab couldn’t be happier, just to be at home. Be-cause the job is beside the point, the power and the prestige, the challenges and the conundrums of being Chairman of Egypt’s biggest and most influential banking institution are entirely secondary. The best thing about all this CIB business is that he’s a ten minute drive away from his sister, liter-ally. And a stone’s throw away from his un-cle, and a phone call away from meeting up with his friends for a quick bite to eat. The point is he’s amongst friends and family in the most “beautiful country” in the world, and that, that, as he keeps reiterating is priceless. “Some people live and die without knowing what makes them happy,” he says. “I’m lucky enough to have figured that out, and it’s being around the people I love, speaking to them, going out with them, having fun with them. It’s the people in this country that make me happy.” Lest we all get a little too carried away by the warm fuzziness of friends (and woollen socks), one ought to remember there’s also the psychology of the archetypal powerful-man to contend with; their intrinsic desire to leave a footprint upon the face of the earth, or at least their industry; their need to make a difference. And of course, Egypt and the Egyptian banking sector afforded Ezz El Arab that very opportunity. “In London there are 1000 guys just like me,” he says. “But in Egypt there would only be a handful.” Today the Egyptian banking sector is no longer in such dire straits and Ezz El Arab has been widely credited with dragging it out of the doldrums while playing an integral role in Egypt’s economic reform programme. He gave his own institution a much needed extreme makeover, introducing world-standard technology and investing in over 54,000 training hours per annum for the bank’s 2000 plus staff. He created a world-class team and world-class commercial services that can compete not only regionally but internationally. “It’s been very exciting,” says Ezz El Arab. “The Egyptian people are sincere and kind and that’s a good thing. That sincerity means you can easily empower them.” He’s revamped mortgage rates and been credited with driving forward the real estate boom. Then again, not all the credit should go to Ezz El Arab. As a devil-may-care youngster he was more interested in the world of tourism. Sure, he was studying for a degree in accounting, but only because he “didn’t have the grades to study anything else. It really was the only faculty that would accept me.” Besides, it was 1977, and all the cool kids were in hospitality, so he spent his summers working the ropes at myriad hotels. But the moment he graduated, it was his father who sent him off to work at the Arab African Bank, ignoring his son’s pleas to the contrary. At first Ezz El Arab dug his heels in, refusing to give up his nightshift at the hotel. Less than a month later, he was hooked to the “beauty” of banking. Thirty-something years later, he’s revolutionised the Egyptian banking sector, boosted the nation’s economy…and ensured that the Chairman of Honeywell thoroughly enjoyed his recent fishing trip to Iceland.