Banque Commerciale du Maroc (BCM, ar, البنك التجاري المغربي, "Commercial Bank of Morocco") was a bank founded in 1911, shortly ahead of the establishment of the
French protectorate in Morocco
The French protectorate in Morocco (french: Protectorat français au Maroc; ar, الحماية الفرنسية في المغرب), also known as French Morocco, was the period of French colonial rule in Morocco between 1912 to 1956. The prote ...
. The bank was initially controlled by France's
Banque Transatlantique, then from 1941 by the
Crédit Industriel et Commercial
The Crédit Industriel et Commercial (CIC, "Industrial and Commercial Credit Company") is a bank and financial services group in France, founded in 1859. It has been majority owned by Crédit Mutuel, one of the country's top five banking groups, ...
, and from 1988 by Morocco's
ONA Group
The ONA Group (Omnium Nord-Africain, Arabic: مجموعة أونا) was established in 1934 and dissolved in 2010 and succeeded by Societe Nationale d'Investissement.
ONA was an industrial, financial and services conglomerate, focused on posit ...
. In 2004, it merged with
Wafa bank to form
Attijariwafa Bank.
History
The BCM was created in 1911 by the
Banque Transatlantique together with its Tunisian subsidiary, the
Banque de Tunisie
The Banque de Tunisie ( ar, البنك التونسي, en, Bank of Tunisia) is a bank in Tunisia, the first established in the country in modern times. It has been listed in the Bourse de Tunis since 1990.Oxford Business Group, ''Tunisia, 2009 ( ...
. Its registered office was in Paris, initially at 10, rue de Mogador (later absorbed by the
Galeries Lafayette
The Galeries Lafayette () is an upmarket French department store chain, the biggest in Europe. Its flagship store is on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris but it now operates in a number of other locations in France and oth ...
), and from 1925 relocated to the Banque Transatlantique's head office at 17,
Boulevard Haussmann
Boulevard Haussmann, long from the 8th to the 9th arrondissement,
is one of the wide tree-lined boulevards created in Paris by Napoleon III, under the direction of his Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann.
The Boulevard Haussmann is mostly ...
. Its main office in Morocco was in
Casablanca.
The BCM opened a branch in
Tangier
Tangier ( ; ; ar, طنجة, Ṭanja) is a city in northwestern Morocco. It is on the Moroccan coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel. The town is the capi ...
in 1913, and after
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
expanded to
Rabat and
Mazagan, then in the late 1920s in
Marrakesh and
Fez
Fez most often refers to:
* Fez (hat), a type of felt hat commonly worn in the Ottoman Empire
* Fez, Morocco (or Fes), the second largest city of Morocco
Fez or FEZ may also refer to:
Media
* ''Fez'' (Frank Stella), a 1964 painting by the moder ...
.
In 1941, BCM was acquired together with Banque Transatlantique and Banque de Tunisie by the
Crédit Industriel et Commercial
The Crédit Industriel et Commercial (CIC, "Industrial and Commercial Credit Company") is a bank and financial services group in France, founded in 1859. It has been majority owned by Crédit Mutuel, one of the country's top five banking groups, ...
(CIC), which took advantage of the
Vichy anti-Jewish legislation
Anti-Jewish laws were enacted by the Vichy France government in 1940 and 1941 affecting metropolitan France and its overseas territories during World War II. These laws were, in fact, decrees of head of state Marshal Philippe Pétain, since Parli ...
. In 1963, Morocco, which had become independent in 1956, undertook a policy of national control of the banking sector known as , and the BCM's registered office was relocated from Paris to Casablanca. That same year,
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
acquired 10% of the BCM's equity capital.
In 1969, a further capital increase resulted in significantly higher Moroccan ownership of the BCM's shares. In June 1988,
ONA Group
The ONA Group (Omnium Nord-Africain, Arabic: مجموعة أونا) was established in 1934 and dissolved in 2010 and succeeded by Societe Nationale d'Investissement.
ONA was an industrial, financial and services conglomerate, focused on posit ...
acquired 25% of the BCM's equity through a capital increase and thus became its controlling shareholder, while the CIC reduced its stake to 10.6%.
By 1999, the capital of BCM was 1,325,000,000.00 Moroccan Dirhams for a total of 13,250,000 shares. In 2002, the capital of
Wafabank was 639,482,700 Moroccan dirhams. The two banks announced their merger in November 2003 and completed it in 2004, in a friendly all-shares transactions at a parity of 7 BCM shares per 8 Wafabank.
Casablanca head office
In
Casablanca, the BCM's head office relocated several times. In 1921, it moved to a building shared with the affiliated shipping company, the
Compagnie Générale Transatlantique
The Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT, and commonly named "Transat"), typically known overseas as the French Line, was a French shipping company. Established in 1855 by the brothers Émile and Issac Péreire under the name ''Compagnie ...
, on the newly traced , now , just north of the recently erected office of the
State Bank of Morocco. Both these buildings, of the BCM and of the State Bank, have since been demolished.
In 1930, the BCM moved to a building designed by
Marius Boyer
Marius Germinal Boyer (22 September 1885, Marseille24 December 1947, Casablanca) was a French architect active in Casablanca, Morocco.
Biography
Marius Boyer was admitted to the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1904. He ...
on 1, , now . The iconic
art deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
structure still exists, and was renovated in 2021.
In the 1970s, under the leadership of its charismatic president , the BCM built a modern inverted-pyramid-shaped head office at 2, Boulevard Moulay Youssef, near the
Arab League Park. This became the headquarters of Attijariwafa Bank following the 2004 merger, and still is as of 2022.
See also
*
List of banks in Morocco
Notes
1911 establishments in Morocco
2004 disestablishments in Morocco
Banks established in 1911
Banks disestablished in 2004
Banks of Morocco
Defunct banks of Morocco
ONA Group
{{Morocco-stub