United Bank Limited

United Bank Limited (often abbreviated as UBL) is a Pakistani bank headquartered at I.I. Chundrigar Road in Karachi. It is a subsidiary of British multinational conglomerate, Bestway Group. Founded by Agha Hasan Abedi in 1959, UBL saw its first branch open on I.I. Chundrigar Road in November of the same year. By 1960, the bank had additional branches in Lahore and Faisalabad (then Lyallpur), as well as Dhaka, Chittagong, and Narayanganj in what was then East Pakistan. The bank was nationalized by the Government of Pakistan in 1974 through the Banks Nationalization Act. The government sold its majority stake in 2002 to Abu Dhabi Group and Bestway Group who retain control to date as of 2025.

UBL is Pakistan's largest bank by market capitalization, third-largest by total assets, and fourth-largest by tier 1 capital.

It is listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange and has been designated as a domestic systemically important bank (D-SIB) by the State Bank of Pakistan.

United Bank Limited was founded in November 1958 by a group of former Habib Bank Limited executives. In 1974, the Bhutto government nationalized the bank.

In 2002, the Government of Pakistan sold 51% of its shares of the bank to a consortium of Abu Dhabi Group and Bestway. In the same year, the bank merged its operations in the United Kingdom with those belonging to National Bank of Pakistan to form United National Bank Limited (later renamed UBL UK). United Bank owned 55% of the joint-venture with National Bank of Pakistan owning the remainder.

In 2005, UBL was listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange, following an initial public offering at a strike price of PKR 50.

In June 2007 the Global Depository Receipts of UBL were listed on the London Stock Exchange. The offering targeted institutional investors and raised exceeding USD 650 million. UBL is the only Pakistani bank and one of the only two Pakistani companies that are listed on the London Stock Exchange.

In April 2010, UBL launched UBL Omni, an in-house developed project designed to provide banking facilities to the unbanked population of Pakistan. As of June 2014 UBL Omni had a customer base exceeding 6.8 million, with over 1.5 million active cards in issue and 5 million monthly transactions valued at over US$253 million. Through the success of UBL Omni 1.55 million previously unbanked individuals have opened mobile bank accounts with UBL in Pakistan. Today^[when?], Omni Dukaan network has grown to 42,100 agents in Pakistan.