In 1893, , A. Lambrinoudis, A. Kallergis, M. Lordanopoulos, and N. Triantafyllidis founded the Bank of Athens backed by Greek, French, and English capital. The bank opened for business in 1894. In 1895, it established branches in
London,
Constantinople,
Smyrna, and
Khartoum. In 1896 international financier
Ioannis Pesmazoglou sold his private bank to the Bank of Athens and became the latter's chairman, also providing the bank with a branch in
Alexandria. In 1904, he forged an alliance with the Banque de l'Union Parisienne, under which the BUP became a small shareholder of the Bank of Athens and became its main source of international refinancing. In August 1906, the Bank of Athens purchased the Industrial Credit Bank (, ),, which had operated in Athens since 1873. The Industrial Credit Bank had offices in Istanbul and possibly in
Smyrna. By 1910, the Bank of Athens had opened branches in
Crete (
Chania,
Heraklion, and
Rethymno), and in
Trabzon and
Samsun on the
Black Sea Region of Turkey. By 1911, it also had branches in Greece in
Agrinio,
Kalamata,
Karditsa,
Larissa,
Piraeus,
Tripoli,
Volos, and
Ermoupoli on the island of
Syros; in the European part of the Ottoman Empire in
Ioannina,
Kavala,
Salonica,
Serres,
Xanthi, and on the island of
Chios and
Vathy, Samos; in Ottoman Asia in
Adana,
Giresun,
Mersin and
Tarsus; in Egypt in
Alexandria,
Cairo,
Beni Suef,
Mansoura,
Mit Ghamr,
Tanta,
Zagazig, as well as
Port Sudan; and in
Limassol and
Hamburg. It survived financial stress during the
Balkan Wars with support from the BUP and the NBG, following which French operational control intensified. In 1921, the Bank of Athens opened an office in
New York City. By 1922, the bank had branches throughout Greece, in
Limassol and
Nicosia, Alexandria,
Cairo,
Port Said,
Galata,
Stamboul,
Beyoğlu,
Edirne,
London and
Manchester. Despite losing its offices in Constantinople, Edirne and Smyrna in October 1922 following the
Greco-Turkish War, the Bank of Athens was by then the second-largest in Greece, a position it kept until its merger in 1953 despite the difficulties generated by the
European banking crisis of 1931 which led the BUP in France to near-collapse. In 1926, the bank's New York City office became a subsidiary called the "Bank of Athens Trust Company". In 1930, the NBG and the Bank of Athens combined their activities in Egypt to form a subsidiary, the National Bank of Greece and Athens (). By the 1930s, the Bank of Athens also had offices in
Korçë and
Durrës. Throughout the interwar period, the Bank of Athens was widely viewed as aligned with French interests in Greece, whereas its dominant competitor the National Bank of Greece was perceived as representing British capital not least through its longstanding association with
London-based
Hambros Bank. In 1941, during the
Axis Occupation of Greece,
Dresdner Bank assumed oversight of the bank, which entailed operational control even though it did not technically take over its shares out of consideration for Italian sensitivities. In 1953, the Greek government decided to merge the comparatively sounder Bank of Athens with the then-ailing NBG to form the "National Bank of Greece and Athens". In New York City, the two banks merged their subsidiaries into the
Atlantic Bank of New York. In 1956, the merged entity in Greece again took the name of National Bank of Greece. File:Jewish museum thessaloniki sign.jpg|Entrance to the bank's former Salonica branch, repurposed as
Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki File:Volos Library.jpg|Former branch building in
Volos, remodeled and repurposed as library of the
University of Thessaly File:Volos Monogram BankofAthens.jpg|Monogram of the bank ("TA" for Τράπεζα Αθηνών) at the former Volos branch ==1990s brand revival and integration into Eurobank Ergasias==