It thus remains one of relatively few central banks whose equity capital is partly in private hands, with stock being traded on Euronext Brussels.

The National Bank was created by Minister Walthère Frère-Orban in 1850 with a unique hybrid status: in the form of a limited company, but with the main objective to carry out missions of general interest entrusted to it by legislation of 5 May 1850, including replacing the Société Générale de Belgique (SGB) as fiscal agent of the Belgian government.

[3]: 8 On 26 August 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, minister of Finance Michel Levie ordered the National Bank to send its reserve assets to London.

In retaliation, the German occupier force withdrew the National Bank's issuing privileges by decree of 20 November 1914, and entrusted it to the SGB instead.

[6]: 119-122 After Janssen's death in June 1941, the London-based Belgian government in exile repudiated the appointment of its Brussels-based successor Albert Goffin and instead expanded the London office into a fully-fledged administration-in-exile of the National Bank led by former Prime Minister Georges Theunis from late November 1941.

The Banque du Congo Belge thus became an important financial agency of the exiled government during the war, and temporarily severed links with its occupied head office in Brussels.

The National Bank wanted the gold to be transported from there to the United States, but the French Navy shipped it instead to Dakar, where it landed on 28 June 1940 and was subsequently moved inland to Kayes in present-day Mali.

[8] Following the turmoil that affected Fortis and Dexia in late 2008, an overhaul of financial regulation in Belgium led to the closure of the Belgian Banking Commission and the entrusting of prudential supervision to the National Bank, while the Financial Services and Markets Authority was created to take over the oversight of market integrity and conduct-of-business regulation.

[citation needed] The printing works of the National Bank closed its doors in August 2020, and the building that hosted them in the center of Brussels was sold in 2021.

the rest of the shares are listed on Euronext Brussels and widely dispersed among market participants, with no shareholder known to hold more than one percent of total equity as of early 2024.

[12] In 1859, it acquired properties on the nearby Rue du Bois Sauvage/Wildewoudstraat, and commissioned architects Hendrik Beyaert and Wynand Janssens [nl] to design a new building.

[14] The entire block was remodeled in the mid-20th century with a state-of-the-art complex built for the bank as part of the broader transportation and urban transformation project known as the North–South connection.

The complex designed by Van Goethem includes the printing presses building on the other side of the Boulevard de Berlaimont, connected to the main headquarters by an underground tunnel.

It features exterior sculpture by Marcel Rau [fr], including aluminium figures of Mercury, Minerva, and Vulcan above the bank's entrance on the Boulevard de Berlaimont; and two bronze statues of kneeling women, respectively by George Grard on the southern side and Charles Leplae [nl] to the north.

[16] The branch in Antwerp was an opulent eclectic building designed by Hendrik Beyaert, the architect of the bank's main office in Brussels, and completed in 1879.