Middle East’s best bank 2019: Arab Bank

Awards for Excellence 2019

This year’s best bank in the Middle East has come a long way to reclaim the title it last won a decade ago. In 2009, we praised Arab Bank for its unmatched ability to survive a crisis, having coped with, and even grown during, the financial crisis that overcame the world’s markets the year before.

Back then, Arab Bank was already engulfed in an arduous legal battle over alleged terrorist financing – a litigation that lasted 14 years, from 2004, and weighed down the bank’s balance sheet with the threat of big payouts.