The term “interlocking directorates” emerged in the study of monopole formation in the world of business in the United States and Europe from the late nineteenth century onwards. Directorates are here considered as networks or parts of networks that embody financial and organisational ties between large corporations which also became interlocked with financial institutions. By looking closer to the practice of interlocking directorates in the Belgo-Egyptian economic context of the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries we investigate aspects of Belgian expansionist entrepreneurship from a long-term perspective. This article is about disentangling connections, relations and patterns that express evolving spheres of influence and action. The results from the network analysis indicate and explain the diverging or converging directions in which Belgian economic activities in Egypt have expanded, and detail the involvement of local elites and corporate cosmopolitanism.