Intra Bank - Foundation and Rise of The Bank

Foundation and Rise of The Bank

The bank was founded in 1951 by Yousef Beidas and three partners as a trading company. The law in Lebanon in 1951 did not cover banking activities as they are known now and became known in Lebanon during the 1950s and 1960s thanks to a large degree to the efforts of Yousef Beidas who was named as the Architect of Lebanese Banking in the Illustrated London News in October 1963. In that major article entitled "The Changing Face of the Middle East" which ran over a dozen pages and was an introduction to European and North American readers to an area given little attention prior to the meteoric rise in status of oil exporting and petrodollar earning states the coverage on Yousef Beidas was a full two pages whereas, for historical comparison purposes, the then ruler of Dubai, Shaikh Rashed bin Saeed al Maktoum, father of the present ruler Shaikh Mohammad bin Rashed, was allocated a quarter page.

Prior to the establishment of Intra Bank the partners had established International Traders (whose cable address was Intra) as a money changing business, and a general trading company with agencies such as Ford Motor Company, Facit business machines and others. International Traders had become the leading money exchange house of Beirut and most of the successful and wealthy expatriates, Najib Salha (wealthiest man in Lebanon in the 1950s and 1960s who later became a major shareholder in Intra Bank) included, were International Traders forex clients.

Intra Bank started in Lebanon but as the recipient of much of the oil income from the Arabian Peninsula it embarked on an expansion program that saw it opening branches all over the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas. This was not all done in the Intra Bank name, banks in other countries were often local entities such as the Bank of the North in Nigeria, Bano Intra S.A., Brasil Banque Intra S.A. (Suisse) etc.