About BNP Paribas
BNP Paribas Group – Who we are
The BNP Paribas Group is born of successive mergers between several banks that were created during the industrial revolution early in the 19th century. From the start, these banks’ missions were to finance the economy and serve their customers worldwide. This long-standing purpose and history over two centuries is now deeply embedded in the Group’s fabric.
BNP Paribas was officially established on 23 May 2000 at the merger between Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP), France’s leading deposit bank, and Paribas, an international investment bank. But its features and values have been forged, transmitted and acquired over 200 years of history marked by developments, transformations and challenges – in a word, BNP Paribas represents two centuries of a bank at the service of the global economy.
To read more about our Group history, please visit: https://histoire.bnpparibas/en/
BNP Paribas history in the Middle East and Africa
Since the 19th Century BNP Paribas’ forerunner banks have operated in Africa, creating a strong banking history on the continent.
In the Middle East, BNP Paribas began to lay the foundations of a commercial network in the Gulf region from the late 1950s and set up a regional hub in Bahrain in 1975. During the following years, a large number of BNP Paribas Group businesses were also rolled out across the Gulf region in geographies such as the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which remain strong platforms to this day.
Our Geographies
