Riad Salameh: Lebanon holds out against the storm

Lebanon has suffered no collapse in the banking sector, credit markets did not dry up and the country is enjoying healthy economic growth. Why?

The international financial crisis was largely caused by deleveraging after the lack of regulation allowed banks to achieve very high levels of leverage against their own equity. In Lebanon, on the other hand, we had linked the off-balance-sheet assets to the on-balance-sheet assets but ensured that the off-balance-sheet assets were related to the actual solvency of the banks.