Mohamed Ozalp, vice chairman of Banque Misr, sits in his office in an ornate 1920s building in downtown Cairo listing the recent progress made at one of Egypt’s oldest banks.
He begins with perhaps the most crucial issue – reaching settlements for the bank’s non-performing loan portfolio. Then he moves on to the creation of a risk department with the help of ABN Amro – a unit that had previously not existed; the hiring of new personnel for human resources, corporate and retail banking; and the introduction of an early retirement plan to reduce bloated staff levels.
