Today, August 13, marks the 82nd death anniversary of Talaat Harb, the renowned Egyptian financier who founded the first fully Egyptian-owned bank and started companies in multiple sectors.
He was named in 2020 to Enterprise's All-Century team of 12 individuals who have been the most influential within the soft-power edge and the national industrial sectors during the past 100 years.
Born in 1867, Harb created Egyptian Bank to manage assets for his country by investing in growth equities and the bank became known for its expertise in aggressive growth in equity investment management in addition to providing various forms of financial assistance to Egypt.
In the 1940s, he founded national business foundations that provided grants and loans for arts, architecture, preservation, start-ups, and small organizations in Mahal City.
His bank also funded local foundations, including a textile firm in the Nile Delta, where he had a home.
Harb invested in various fields, spanning the economy. He had the idea of creating a national bank even before the Egyptian 1919 Revolution, but the conditions were not favorable at that time due to World War I.
Harb aimed to diversify economic activities and enable Egyptians to have greater influence over their own economy.
The Egyptian National Bank was founded in 1920 with a start-up capital of LE80,000 as an agricultural bank, but later became an industrial bank and funded many of the industries that still exist in Egypt today.
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