Bank of Athens

In 1893, Epaminondas Empirikos [el], A. Lambrinoudis, A. Kallergis, M. Lordanopoulos, and N. Triantafyllidis founded the Bank of Athens backed by Greek, French, and English capital.

In 1904, he forged an alliance with the Banque de l'Union Parisienne,[5] under which the BUP became a small shareholder of the Bank of Athens and became its main source of international refinancing.

[6]: 103  By 1910, the Bank of Athens had opened branches in Crete (Chania, Heraklion, and Rethymno), and in Trabzon and Samsun on the Black Sea Region of Turkey.

[7]: 189  By 1911, it also had branches in Greece in Agrinio, Kalamata, Karditsa, Larissa, Piraeus, Tripoli, Volos, and Ermoupoli on the island of Syros; in the European part of the Ottoman Empire in Ioannina, Kavala, Salonica, Serres, Xanthi, and on the island of Chios and Vathy, Samos; in Ottoman Asia in Adana, Giresun, Mersin and Tarsus; in Egypt in Alexandria, Cairo, Beni Suef, Mansoura, Mit Ghamr, Tanta, Zagazig, as well as Port Sudan; and in Limassol and Hamburg.

By 1922, the bank had branches throughout Greece, in Limassol and Nicosia, Alexandria, Cairo, Port Said, Galata, Stamboul, Beyoğlu, Edirne, London and Manchester.

Following the 1953 merger, the South African operation kept the Bank of Athens brand and remained under NBG ownership until being sold in October 2018 to Grobank Limited, a financial group based in Johannesburg.