Aresbank, the entity specialist in foreign trade operations between Spain and the Arab world, opens a new strategic stage and wants to boost its business by taking advantage of the opportunities that the economies of North Africa and the Middle East offer to companies. Your roadmap hits multiple buttons: it has begun to track partnerships with local banks in multiple countries to facilitate the entry of their clients into these markets; just premiere at the window of the Bank of Spain and with the ICO to accumulate ammunition, in the form of liquidity, that allows it to assume greater financing; and is deploying an agenda of contacts and participation in forums so that companies know their services better and use them.
Today works with Ibex-35 companies, although the bulk of their clients are medium sized companies and even small ones that they export to said geographies. “Wait double our number of Spanish clients from 2023 to 2025, falling short,” reveals its CEO and general director, Javier Sierra, in an interview with elEconomista.es.
Founded in 1975 as Spanish entity with Libyan capital and supervised by the Bank of Spainis probably the bank with the most experience in Spain in trade, projects and industry in connection with the Arab world.
And a little more than a year ago it signed Sierra, former head of NatWest, as part of a leadership remodeling to accelerate its growth. “This is a project with a very good foundation, because the bank has an enormous virtue of being able to develop perfectly with the Spanish and Libyan business, because it pays a dividend, maintains a workforce and provides a service to the economy of its reference shareholder, that needs to have a facilitator in all its imports. They have oil, gas and other exports… It worked very well, but it also had enormous potential,” he says.
Under the umbrella of the BdE
He arrived with three decades of experience in the financial sector behind him -almost 20 at Natwest-, extensive experience in investment banking, team management and closing large transactions to a niche bank with a very defined focus: “There is a clear objective: fPromote foreign trade between the North African area and the countries of the Middle East (MENA region), and Europe“.
But he sees great potential due to the positioning: “I would say that in our segment There is no bank in Europe that does it better. We can lose an operation due to price or relationship, but in quality of service, knowledge and competitiveness we are unbeatable,” he claims. And he accompanies it with numbers: “Last year we had 1.2 billion in foreign trade operations and this year we are going the 2,000 million”.
The key is that while the Spanish banking, and by extension European bankingis reluctant to finance projects in countries in the MENA area Due to distrust towards the local payer or provider, Aresbank works in familiar territory. The entity belongs to the Libyan Foreign Bank, a group that owns 22 other banks – four in Europe and the rest in the MENA area – and has 300 local partner banks in 76 countries that provide support when addressing operations for clients in their regions and even prescribe transactions.
The new roadmap seeks to expand or complete that geographic footprint towards new markets and economies with potential for your business with companies. “Our short-term agenda, without a doubt, is Algeria, Turkey and Egypt, without ever neglecting our parent company. The more we can do in Libya, phenomenal; and then Iraq, Jordan, without a doubt, and with caution, certain countries of the Sub-Saharan Africa. In this region we are helping some companies because the potential is enormous, but, of course, in countries like Togo, Burkina Faso or Niger you have to go with someone who gives you a lot of confidence and who guarantees payment. The Gulf area is good, but it is so developed and they have so much money that there is not much perception of risk and any European entity can do it because they are very comfortable,” he explains.
Remunerate the treasury
In Algeria, the country’s central bank barely a month ago lifted the restrictions imposed two years ago by Algiers for foreign trade with Spain, which has historically been its third trading partner. In Türkiye, Aresbank has already participated in two syndicated loans “from the country’s two leading banks” and they are operations that multiply by several times the amounts arranged in other geographies. His interest is, in fact, to enter into a fight for larger volume operations, although he specifies that “without disdaining any of them.”
To have greater capacity, Aresbank has just gone, for the first time in its history, to the financing window of the Bank of Spain, has begun to work with ICO lines and to enhance the capture of liquidity by companies. Until now, it compensated its clients’ cash peaks in dollars and in short terms, and now it has expanded the offer to remunerations in euros with greater validity, always within the global commercial relationship with the companies.
Sierra believes that great growth potential opens up for the national business community in the Arab world, with exports of their products or project opportunities in, for example, infrastructure construction. However, he admits that Aresbank is not well known, something that he seeks to remedy with greater participation by the bank in forums or accompanying business missions. The entity has joined, for example, CEIM and signed a collaboration agreement with the Madrid Chamber of Commercewhich it aims to replicate in other autonomous communities.
Record results and good dividend
After a chain of two years of losses due to atypicalities, Aresbank returned to profit in 2023, with a net result of 631,000 euros. Its objective is to achieve sustainable and growing results, just like in business, although it starts from a small balance sheet, around 1,000 million. “As we are not listed, we can say that the path so far is one of record results in the bank’s 49-year history. This year we will be very far from those 600,000 euros,” he said. 60% corresponds to the interest margin and the rest of the business is the trade.
However, he stressed that the most important thing for him is the entity’s clear commercial strategy. “Because in a country with top-level banks, if you don’t specialize by size you have nothing to do. And that has been our job,” he added. The CEO also detailed that next year the bank will pay a “good dividend”, which will be approved by the board in March.
In addition to the good performance of the results, prudent risk management is added, since its doubtful loan ratio is close to zero.
Sierra highlighted that its main competitors are UBAE in Italy and the British Arab Commercial Bank, which “curiously are sisters of the same group (the Libyan Foreign Bank).” “Now those two earn more money than us, (…) but I am convinced that with the model we have and with the reinvestment we are making, we will catch up with them,” he explained.
#Aresbank #tracks #alliances #Türkiye #Egypt #Iraq #Algeria #Jordan #Tunisia #grow
