The Lebanese have begun to see the start of the restructuring of the banking sector under the supervision of the Banque du Liban and the Banking Control Commission, with the closure of a large number of bank branches that they deal with, especially in areas that included more than one branch of one bank. A large number of depositors spoke of recent text messages informing them of transferring their accounts from one branch to another as a result of the continuous closure of a number of branches, according to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper.

The newspaper said that this process coincides with the loss of hundreds of bank employees their jobs, knowing that more than two thousand were originally dismissed  from the sector at the end of last year, as the head of the Syndicate of Banking Employees, Asad El-Khoury, confirms to “Asharq Al-Awsat”, pointing out that “we are about to start a banking massacre considering that At least 5,000 employees will soon face the same fate. ” Al-Khoury added, “We are closely monitoring the employees’ conditions, and we have made sure that the 2,000 employees who were dismissed in the past months obtained their rights, and this was done under the supervision of the Ministry of Labor, especially since we witnessed mass disbursements from 3 banks. ” He points out that work is currently focused on increasing compensation for those who will be disbursed in the coming weeks and months. “The strong republican bloc has transformed our vision in this regard into proposing a law that we seek with the various blocs to be approved to alleviate the impact of the next wave of exchange.”

Last summer, the Central Bank of Lebanon announced the establishment of a “Banking Restructuring Committee”, and in the first step in terms of restructuring, it asked banks to increase their capital by 20 percent by the end of February. It was also required to form a free offshore account from any liabilities with correspondent banks abroad of not less than 3 percent of total foreign currency deposits