Middle East: Constantly tested, Lebanese banks remain resilient

Shaken by war on its border, a political crisis that has left it without an elected president for two years, and a collapse in the price of oil, Lebanon’s economy is facing challenges unseen since the country’s own civil war.

Riad Salameh2-600


Governor Riad Salamé says the central bank has been working hard to avoid
the banking sector feeling excessive pain

Riad Salamé, Lebanon’s central bank governor since 1993, has grown used to working in difficult conditions. So his pronouncements on the state of the Lebanese economy and its banking sector can be darker than one might expect from a central banker. “You know, in Lebanon, you can say that there was no year that was not hard,” he tells Euromoney, deadpan.

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