Egyptian billionaire launches new bank in Europe

Egyptian billionaire businessman and the Chairman of Orascom Telecom, Media and Technology, Naguib Sawiris, has launched a new bank that operated in several European countries.

According to an official statement by Sawiris on Monday, the Luxembourg-based lender, RiverBank SA, started operating today after recieving a full European banking licence from the European Central Bank (ECB) last March.

RiverBank is an independent Luxembourg based Pan-European lender that specialises in providing loans to small and medium-sized businesses, focusing on the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) and Germany.  As the founder and director of Marchmont Limited, Sawiris owns a majority stake in the bank.

“The bank is considered an addition to our huge investments in Luxemburg and Europe,” Sawiris stated, as quoted by Egypt’s Amwal Al-Ghad.

The bank strategy is to offer several online saving products and expand its lending activity in 2018, targeting a volume of loans that varies between € 75,000 and €3 million, in addition to mutual investment opportunities that could reach €10 million in value.

In March 2016, Sawiris revealed his plan to invest €50 million ($53 million), with the aim to set up a new bank in Luxembourg specialising in financing small and medium enterprises.

With a fortune of $3.9 billion, Naguib Sawiris ranks the second locally while 460 globally in Forbes 2017 list of the world’s richest people.