Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale
The Banque du Sénégal was founded by decree of Napoleon III of 21 December 1853, which established it as a discount and credit bank.
[3] The bank's ownership structure was based on the number of slaves owned or sold at the time of the legislation of 30 April 1849 which settled compensation following the abolition of slavery.
[8] In 1910, aiming at a role of bank of issue in Madagascar, it renamed itself the Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale et Orientale, but abandoned the new name as the project never came to fruition.
[2]: 510 Eventually a new agreement was signed in 1927, ratified by the French Parliament in 1928-1929 and entered into force on 1 July 1929, extending the issuance privilege by 20 years (until 1949).
[2]: 511 By the 1920s, business in the AOF was dominated by just three private joint stock companies: the Compagnie Française de l'Afrique Occidentale [fr], the Nouvelle Société Commerciale africaine, and the Société Commerciale de l'Ouest Africain [fr] (lagging slightly were the growing plantation and mining interests of the Unilever company).
In the ensuing period, the BOA became more aligned with the government and started acting more like a central bank, playing a key role in restructuring the failing BCA in late 1931.
[22] Meanwhile, the BAO's branch network kept expanding to Bamako in 1925, Brazzaville in July 1926,[23] Kaolack and Port Gentil in 1928,[24] Cotonou and Libreville in 1929-1930,[25] and Pointe-Noire in 1937.
[2]: 517 In 1940, the BAO remained under the control of Vichy France but lost access to its operations in French Equatorial Africa and Cameroon, where its privilege of money issuance was withdrawn by the Vichy government, then granted by Charles de Gaulle on 24 July 1942 to the recently created Caisse Centrale de la France Libre (CCFL).
[27] Meanwhile, new competition appeared on the BAO's turf, with large French banks starting to create African branch networks of their own.
The Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie (BNCI) opened in Dakar in late 1939, Saint-Louis and Abidjan in 1940, Conakry and Bamako in 1941, Cotonou in 1942, Porto-Novo in 1944, and Lomé in 1946.
[20]: 11-18 The BOA also expanded its network, in Magaria in 1943 and in Zinder in 1944, both near the southern border of Niger,[28] then in Bobo-Dioulasso in May 1945,[20]: 14 Bangui in 1946, and Fort Lamy (later N'Djamena) in 1950.
[5] The BAO's twenty-year issuance privilege of 1929 expired in 1949, triggering a new period of short-term extensions and debates about the future monetary order in the region.
In 1965, the BAO concluded negotiations with the First National City Bank of New York (FNCBNY, later Citibank) to inject fresh capital into its operations.
[34]: 3 In June 1975, the government of Benin nationalized the BIAO there and merged it together with all other commercial banks in the country into the state-owned Banque Commerciale du Bénin.
In 1980, the BIAO established a separate subsidiary for its operations in Niger, headquartered in Niamey with offices in Zinder, Maradi, Arlit, and Tahoua.
[37] Partly as a consequence of the 1980s oil glut and of political turmoil, the BIAO entered severe financial distress at the end of the decade.
[42] In March 1991, BNP sold the rest of the BIAO's African network to Meridien international Bank limited (MIBL), a holding controlled by financier Andrew Sardanis and incorporated in the Bahamas.
[43] By then, BIAO no longer had any assets left in Africa,[44] whereas BNP had successfully sold its head office building at 9, avenue de Messine in Paris.
[39] BNP was also accused to jeopardize the BIAO to the benefit of the competing network it owned at the time in Africa under the brand Banque Internationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie (BICI),[32] especially after MIBL we itself liquidated in a context of fraud allegations in 1995.
[46] In 2006, Belgolaise in turn sold its stake to a consortium led by insurer Nouvelle Société Interafricaine d'Assurance [fr] (NSIA) with the Institution de Prévoyance Sociale, an Ivorian public fund, as a minority participant.
