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Death of a Titan

Agha Hasan Abedi, the legendary Pakistani banker, who quietly passed away in Karachi on Saturday, after protracted illness, will be long remembered for his unforgettable role in the promotion of purposeful banking, both at home and abroad. Having risen spectacularly, his entire banking career, beginning with the Habib Bank, was studded with the brilliant dimensions he added both to style and approach of the banking industry in Pakistan. Taking up the banking profession, which was sort of a taboo with the bulk of the Muslim intelligentsia in South Asia, just a year before the creation of Pakistan, he was destined to take the nation's banking industry to unimaginable heights. And in doing so, he must have drawn all along on the missionary's vision inside him, as bestowed by Almighty Allah.

Wide ranging and variegated were his achievements as a banker who became a legend in the world of finance in his own life time. Right from the early recognition of his talent at the Habib Bank, to his voluntary retirement because of ill health, from the high office of president of the BCCI, which he founded in collaboration with the Bank of America NT & SA, the entire span of his professional life, was marked with success after success in meeting a host of formidable challenges. The innovations in banking he introduced at the United Bank, which he founded after leaving Habib Bank, paved the way for the addition of a great deal more to banking practice in our part of the world. Taking the bank branches out of the log of traditional methods and philosophy, he lit the way to personalised banking along modern lines. It not only helped change the whole outlook of bankers in the country but also inspired them with the idea of catching up with the technological advances taking place internationally.

It goes without saying that had it not been for his revolutionary outlook on banking during the Ayub era of diversified industrialisation, Pakistan's economy would have still remained ignorant of the vital complementary role of banks in the development and growth of industry. The radical change in banking culture during Agha Hasan Abedi's eventful stay at the United Bank, indeed, originated in his genius, which was again unmistakably demonstrated by his unique ability to foresee coming events. It was towards the peak of performance he had successfully guided the United Bank to achieve, that he foresaw the bad days in store for the private banks in Pakistan. This realisation, instead of making him despondent, spurred him to use his unique banking acumen beyond the frontiers of Pakistan, and to spread it out in the vast world both in the neighbourhood and across the seven seas.

It may be recalled that by that time Abedi had already made his mark as a dependable and forward looking banker in the oil rich Gulf region. This came handy in his major international enterprise, the founding of the nucleus of BCCI, in Luxembourg. And he saw to it that it grew fast, dismantling or bypassing all barriers, into a vast financial empire, based right in the United States itself which most dreaded the meteoric rise of a dynamic banking institution, with a Third World giant at its back. While the United States left no stone unturned to frustrate BCCI's onward progress, it went on gaining strength and popularity, mainly because of the fathomless capabilities of Agha Hasan Abedi in overcoming crises. Legendary indeed was the success of BCCI in the West, despite its soft corner for the Third World countries, including Pakistan, for which it went out of the way at times to help save it from the fatal blows from foreign aid clubs. Many a scandal against BCCI, as engineered in the United States, has been attributed to their failure in arresting this unique bank's onward march. However, the bank did ultimately collapse, but only after Agha Hasan Abedi had bowed out on genuine health grounds. They did try to tarnish his image by implicating him in a number of scandals later associated with BCCI. That wicked desire remained unfulfilled as the Pakistan government refused to respond favourably to the American request for his extradition. Strange are the ways of Allah; He has His own way of rewarding those who deserve.