The City of London is the financial centre of the Western world. The City is London's commercial centre boasting over 1,000 banks, the Stock Exchange, Baltic Exchange, Metal Exchange and many other business institutions. Today, every important international bank has a key office there, and BCC is no exception, with a branch and the bank's Centre Support Organisation offices sited at 100 Leadenhall Street in the very heart of the City. It is an attractive modern building less than 500 metres from the Bank of England, and the location of the most important branch operation within the Bank of Credit and Commerce.
August 1980 saw the formation of a new and sophisticated section within BCC's central support organisation - the newly created planning division. A guarded look at the future is a vital ingredient for the success of any banking operation, and to this extent exaggerated changes in international monetary policies or worldwide trading activities can be partly anticipated or capitalised upon by careful strategic planning. Human resources, growing markets and new services can also be developed between the planners and the "men in the front line", those charged with carrying out actual day-to-day banking responsibilities.
BCC and the Zimbabwe government have joined hands to launch a joint venture commercial bank in the newly independent African country. Bank of Credit and Commerce (Zimbabwe) Ltd, the nation's first bank after independence will be Zimbabwe's fifth commercial bank, joining Standard Chartered, Barclays International, Rhobank, and Grindlays.
Although Oman has a great and long history, stretching back 5,000 years, it is only in the past ten years that the country has emerged into the modern community of nations. That emergence followed the discovery of oil in the late 1960s, and the coming to power in 1970 of the present ruler, the enlightened Sultan Qaboos bin Sa'id. It was not until four years later that the Bank of Credit and Commerce opened its first branch in the rapidly developing Sultanate.
Read the full issue here: BCC International - No. 6