National Bank of Belgium

National Bank of Belgium
Nationale Bank van België (in Dutch)
Banque nationale de Belgique (in French)
Belgische Nationalbank (in German)

Headquarters	Brussels
Established	5 May 1850
Ownership	Government of Belgium (50%) Public float (50%)[1] Traded as: Euronext Brussels: BNB
Governor	Pierre Wunsch [nl]
Central bank of	Belgium
Reserves	8 450 million USD[1]
Succeeded by	European Central Bank (1999)1
Website	www.nbb.be
1 The National Bank of Belgium still exists but many functions have been taken over by the ECB.

The National Bank of Belgium (NBB; Dutch: Nationale Bank van België, French: Banque nationale de Belgique, German: Belgische Nationalbank) is the Belgian member of the Eurosystem. It was established by a law of 5 May 1850 and has been the monetary authority for Belgium from then until 1998, issuing the Belgian franc (albeit with interruption during World War I and duplication during World War II, when two National Banks with diverging loyalties operated in parallel from Brussels and London between July 1941 and September 1944).

Since 2011, the National Bank has also been Belgium's prudential supervisory authority, and since 2014, its national competent authority within European Banking Supervision.^[2] In the area of financial market infrastructure, it stands out as supervisor of both Euroclear and SWIFT. Additional tasks include the management of foreign currency reserves; the collection, circulation and analysis of economic and financial information; a role of financial ambassador to international economic and financial bodies; and services for the Belgian State, the Belgian financial sector, and the general public.

The Belgian government has held half of the National Bank's equity since the aftermath of World War II. It thus remains one of relatively few central banks whose equity capital is partly in private hands, with stock being traded on Euronext Brussels.