When Mahmoud Abdel Latif walked into the Bank of Alexandria as the newly appointed chairman, he was in for a rude awakening. After a career with Citibank and Chase Manhattan, which and taken him into the heart of modern western banking, Bank of Alexandria, a rotting state entity, was about to present a whole new series of challenges.

The staff were untrained and unmotivated. It was impossible to find a chair with four legs. At the time, non-performing loans accounted for 80 per cent of the E£18bn loan portfolio. The only products the bank offered were basic accounts; the only credit facilities were overdrafts handed out willy-nilly. The list went on.