Business Abroad: The New Mideast Money Man

In Beirut one morning a fortnight ago, curiosity seekers poured into the Phoenicia Hotel for opening-day glimpses of an unconventional attraction: a large, strikingly modern room resplendent with teakwood ceiling, Abyssinian peacock-wood paneling and a floor of peacock-blue carpeting. Marveling, the visitors ran eager hands over a milky terrazzo counter embedded with tiny pieces of brass to simulate marine life on an ocean bottom. Some of the visitors even opened an account. For though it looked for all the world like a cocktail lounge, the room was the newest branch of Lebanon's Intra Bank. "Nobody's wandered in and asked for a drink yet," said jubilant Intra Bank Founder Yusuf Bedas, 50, adding, "Conservative banks belong to the past."

Yusuf Bedas' own flamboyant history supports his thesis. Since 1948, when the creation of Israel ended Palestine's role as banker to the Middle East, free-enterprising Lebanon has been inundated by a flood of investment money from oil-rich Saudi princes and from wealthy Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqis frightened by the increasingly socialist policies of their own governments. Riding this tide, brash, resolute Yusuf Bedas in ten years of frenetic expansion has built Intra from scratch into Beirut's largest bank, with capital of $10,000,000 and 16 branches in Europe and the Arab world.

Banking on the Floor. Born the second son of a Russian Orthodox missionary in Jerusalem, Bedas began his banking career at 16 as a messenger boy. By 1948, he had shouldered his way up to head the Arab Bank of the Middle East, only to lose all his capital when he fled Israel as a refugee. Rounding up $4,000, he opened a currency exchange office in two dingy fourth-floor rooms in Beirut. With typical flourish, he named the operation "International Traders." Says he: "We had to have a name out of all proportion to our size to impress people."

Armed principally with effrontery, Bedas canvassed clients at Beirut hotels, pared his profit margins in order to offer irresistible rates. To build capital, he contracted for any kind of business he could get. once rented his office furniture to the Red Cross and temporarily ran the currency exchange squatting on the bare floor. The Korean war and the consequent boom in currency transactions boosted Bedas' income, and his aggressiveness so impressed wealthy clients that more and more of them left funds in his care.

Potash & Planes. In 1951, Bedas set up Intra (cable code for International Traders) with initial capital of $2,000,000.

He lured business from competing Beirut banks by cutting loan rates from 9% to 6%. To gain stature for his upstart bank, he convinced Bank of America that it should come into his trade-financing op erations, became correspondent for New York's venerable Chase Manhattan Bank, and opened branches in Syria, Iraq, Qatar and Jordan. In 1958, when near civil war halted Lebanese banking for more than three months and most of his competitors sat brooding over their ill fortune, Bedas took advantage of the lull to set up a branch in London and an affiliate bank in Geneva.