Before the revolution in 1979 there were 24 privately owned banks operating in Iran but after 1979 these were all nationalised and, along with the 32 state-owned banks and other joint ventures, the banking sector was boiled down into around 10 state-owned institutions.
While many of today’s large state banks started off as amalgams of various private banks, they soon lost their private roots and by the 1990s had adopted an all-embracing state-sector culture. The idea of the privately owned bank, however, had not disappeared altogether – just as the bazaar was still alive and well.
