Yousef Beidas

Yousef Beidas (Arabic يوسف بيدس, also transliterated Yusif Bedas, Yusef Baydas, Yousif Beydas) (December 1912 - 28 November 1968) was a Palestinian Christian Lebanese banker. Known as "The Genius from Jerusalem" and the founder and Chairman of Intra Bank he was the central figure in one of the Middle East's greatest financial success stories and later one of its most disastrous financial collapses. To his dying day, Beidas claimed he was victim of 'a well-planned conspiracy'.

Born in Jerusalem, Palestine under Ottoman rule, Beidas was the son of Palestinian author and scholar Khalil Beidas. In Mandatory Palestine he enjoyed a brilliant and precocious career. He was appointment the director of the exchange section of the Palestinian branch of Barclay's Bank at 21 years of age, and rose to be manager of the Arab Bank by the end of World War 2. Having fled Palestine in 1948 with his pregnant wife, Wedas Salameh, whom he married in 1946, he took up Lebanese nationality on account of his Beirut-born mother. One of the outcomes of the Israeli-Arab war in Palestine in 1948, and the concomitant flight of huge numbers of Palestinians, was that Haifa lost its status as the commercial centre of the Mashriq or Arab countries east of Egypt, and the role was picked up by Beirut. Lebanese traders were happy to lay out the red carpet for people they otherwise regarded as "two -bit Palestinians" for the capital and talent that could bring to the local economy.

Beidas set himself up as a money-changer in Beirut with a personal capital of $4,000. On one occasion he even rented all of his office furniture, leaving only a sitting area on the floor for himself to conduct his business, and eventually managed to put 100 competitors out of business.

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