European Banks' International Company SA (EBIC)'s origins date back to the second half of the 1950s, when Amsterdamsche Bank N.V., Société Générale de Belgique, Deutsche Bank AG and Midland Bank Ltd. began to establish relations among themselves, leading to the 1963 creation of the European Advisory Committee (EAC), a permanent advisory group whose job it was to review and discuss issues of mutual interest and lay the groundwork for joint action at the international level.
One of the joint initiatives that came about thanks to this collaboration was the 1967 founding in Brussels of Banque Européenne de Crédit a Moyen Terme (BEC), which set up collective representative offices with the purpose of providing medium- to long-term financing to major industrial firms in Europe.
EBIC was created in Brussels on 30 October 1970 in order to better coordinate the joint activities of EAC member banks. Creditanstalt-Bankverein (Vienna) and Société Générale (Paris) joined the new company in 1971, followed by Banca Commerciale Italiana (BCI) in 1973. Discussion regarding the terms for BCI's EBIC membership took some time, as BCI did not agree with the obligation to participate in every EBIC initiative and joint venture, the principle of exclusivity that would have been established had BCI been obliged to end its relationship with Paribas, nor the obligation to close any branches it had in the same markets as EBIC (which had representative offices in Jakarta, Johannesburg and Toronto as well as various interests and subsidiaries). BCI did finally become a member of EBIC, but reserved the right to decide on a case-by-case basis in which initiatives it would take part.

ASI-BCI, VCE; March 6, 1973
ASI-BCI, VCA; March 27, 1973, vol. 54, p. 79
ASI-BCI, Papers of Antonio Monti