In Egypt, around 140 officials of the central bank and other major state-owned banks; National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr and Banque Du Caire recently resigned. The move came in response to the Egyptian government's decision to enforce a maximum wage of 42.000 Egyptian pounds per month for public employees including those working in the state-owned banks. Accordingly, the country is expected to witness more resignations in the coming phase; this would fuel fears of seeing absence of leadership in the Egyptian banking system. The list of recently resigned from the CBE and governmental banks mainly includes the second highest-ranking official in the central bank, Nidal Assar, deputy governor for investment and foreign relations. Other big names at the country's biggest state-owned bank NBE, have recently left their post; Hazem Hegazy, Soha Soliman and Zeinab Hashim. Hegazy was NBE's Head of Retail Banking Sector before moving to Barclays Egypt. For Soliman, she was working as the Director of SME Finance Department at NBE, but then she moved to become the Secretary-General of the Social Fund for Development (SFD). In addition, Hashim was NBE's Treasury Manager but recently decided to leave her post to become the CEO of Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB Capital) – Egypt. Earlier, the National Bank of Egypt witnessed the resignation of the second deputy chairman Sherif Elwy, who recently becomes the regional director of the Arab Bank in Egypt. Moreover, Banque Misr, one of the biggest banks in Egypt, has recently received the resignation of vice chairman Mohammed Abbas Fayed, who currently becomes the Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Bank Audi Egypt. In this respect, banking senior sources affirmed to Amwal Al Ghad that the application of the maximum wage law for the employees in the governmental banks had contributed to lowering in return the salaries of employees working for private banks. The sources attributed the lowered salaried to the increasing demand for working for the private banks in the country.
