National Bank
With the proclamation of the Albanian Republic and consolidation of power by strongman Ahmed Zogu, conditions appeared that enabled the creation of a more stable financial infrastructure, albeit at the price of severe dependence on external powers. With involvement of British and especially Italian diplomats, a convention was signed on 1925/03/15 between the Albanian authorities represented by Foreign Minister Mufid Libohova and the Italian bank Credito Italiano led by Mario Alberti (banker), setting the framework for the creation of the National Bank of Albania, with seat in Rome and operations in Albania. The text was then ratified by the Albanian legislature on 1925/06/22, allowing the National Bank of Albania to be formally established in Rome on 1925/09/02.[7]
The convention of March 1925 had established that the National Bank's initial share capital would be held by a mix of Italian, Albanian, Yugoslav, Swiss and Belgian partners. The stated intent was that Albanian interests would control half of the capital of 12.5 million gold francs, but they turned out to not have the capacity or willingness for that. As a result, Italian interests ended up holding more than half of the total. Specifically, the bank was founded with 100,000 founders' shares, entirely in Italian hands[8] and largely controlled by Credito Italiano, and 495,000 common shares dispersed among various investors. These included Eqrem Vlora (11.7 percent), Nexhat Pasha Vlora (10.5 percent), Basler Handelsbank (10.1 percent), a Yugoslav consortium of Belgrade Cooperative Bank, Serbian Bank in Zagreb, Adriatic-Danubian Bank and Serbo-Albanian Bank[8] (10.1 percent), Mufid's brother Ajet Libohova and Ugo Viali (8.1 percent each), Banca Commerciale Italiana, Banca Nazionale di Credito, Banco di Roma, and Massimo Aurelio (6.1 percent each), Vincenzo Azzolini and Banque Belge pour l'Étranger (5 percent each), with the remaining 35,000 shares (7.1 percent) mostly held by smaller Italian banks.
In practice and despite its name, the National Bank of Albania was entirely outside the control of the Albanian authorities, and has been described as a "real death-knell for any further Albanian economic independence". It was legally headquartered in Rome and led by an Italian official,[9] initially the economist Amedeo Gambino. This setup was inspired by the precedent of the State Bank of Morocco, whose central functions were split between Paris and Tangier.[10] Similarly, the National Bank's founding meeting and subsequent meetings of its governing body (consiglio di amministrazione) were held in Rome, where the Albanian government's gold reserves were transferred. The political backlash against the foreign dominance of the National Bank was leveraged by Zogu to sideline Mufid Libohova, an able official whom he had come to view as a potential rival and who was forced to retire from Albanian political life.
The National Bank's Roman seat was on Piazza dell'Esedra, at the corner with the Via Nazionale and thus not far from the Bank of Italy. In Albania, its offices opened in Durrës on 29 November 1925, in Shkodër on 1 November 1926, in Vlorë on 15 November 1926, and subsequently in Berat, Elbasan, Korçë, and Sarandë.
Under the Italian protectorate of Albania (1939–1943), the National Bank continued its activity but came under increased commercial competition from Banco di Napoli and Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which developed their operations in Albania. The National Bank opened a branch in Prizren which had then been annexed to Albania. It also considered extending its activity to Montenegro, but that project was not carried out. Its monetary stance became severely inflationary: its aggregate issued money, which had been 11.1 million francs at end-1937 and 10.5 million at end-1938, rose to 26.3 million at end-1939, 80.2 million at end-1940, and 108.4 million at end-1941.
Under the German occupation of Albania from September 1943, the National Bank kept operating but under increasingly difficult conditions, and was forced by the occupiers to transfer its gold reserves from Rome to Berlin.
