Appointing Hassan Abdallah as the acting governor of the Central Bank of Egypt “CBE” was by all measures a very interesting one for several reasons. Mostly, it means that to fix or undo what Tarek Amar had done, you must bring one of his old nemeses in his place.
Hassan Abdallah has not wasted any time in undoing what his processor had done already and took a couple of decisions earning the praise of many despite what his decisions so far are of short-term medicine than a long-term solution.
Now, it is time for some juicy summer economic and financial gossip and our post tonight is about Amer vs Abdallah and that fight between them that ended somehow so far in the favor of the latter.
Please pay attention to the names because they are too many in our post.
They all play the musical chairs game but in the adult real world of finance.
Amer Vs banks chairmen
In March 2016, Amer as the governor of CBE issued a decision to place a-9-years-limit on the tenures of CEOs of commercial banks in Egypt. The CBE said in its statement about the decision that it was taken to “Help to modernize the sector and inject new blood”.
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Abdallah on the left and Amer on right |
In essence, you would think it was a good decision but during then it was said that Amer wanted to get rid of some former rival Egyptian banks’ CEOs who did not like his policies above them two: Commercial International Bank “CIB”'s Hisham Ezz al-Arab and AAIB’s Hassan Abdallah.
There were 8 CEOs including Abdallah and Ezz al-Arab to be affected by that decision and they would not leave without a fight in front of the courts even if they let others go on their behalf to the court
In June 2019, Cairo’s Administrative court nullified the decision after a lawsuit and during then the CBE decided not to appeal the decision. The veteran CEOs seemed to win that round, but it was not over.
In September 2018, the CBE appointed Abdallah as the first assistant to the CBE governor and a new CEO was appointed for AAIB.
In May 2019, suddenly leaked reports based on anonymous sources surfaced on a couple of websites like Cairo 24 speaking about the real reason for dismissing Abdallah from his position in the AAIB, claiming his involvement in huge financial violations discovered by the CBE’s supervisory body.
If a person is accused of corruption, why would he be given a position like CBE governor’s assistant as a punishment!?