Banks operating in the more exciting parts of the world have always faced big risks.
Just consider the old British Bank of the Middle East (BBME). On January 20, 1976, during a lull in Lebanon's bitter civil war, a military unit surrounded the BBME's Bab Idriss branch in Beirut, favourite depository of the city's wealthy elite.
Covered by a barrage of mortar fire, the soldiers stormed the bank, blasting their way in through the front door with rocket-propelled grenades.
They spent the next few hours methodically laying high explosive charges, which they detonated to blow open the branch's supposedly impregnable vault.
According to Beirut's Daily Star, it took the robbers two days to strip the bank's safety deposit boxes of their contents, largely gold bullion, jewellery, cash, and stock and bond certificates.
The loot was loaded into a fleet of trucks, which promptly vanished along with their heavily armed escort into the back streets of war-torn Beirut.