Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris is scheduled to complete the acquisition of CI Capital Holding this month to create Egypt’s second-largest investment bank.
The 924 million Egyptian pound (US$118 million) deal is in “execution mode” after the share-purchase agreement was signed, Sawiris said in an interview in Cairo on Sunday. He sees no regulatory objections to the deal.
The acquisition comes about four months after Orascom Telecom Media and Technology (OTMT), Sawiris’ investment arm, paid more than 600 million Egyptian pounds for Beltone Financial Holding SAE, another investment bank.
The billionaire is betting on an eventual recovery in the battered economy of the most populous Arab country, even as a foreign currency shortage hampers growth.
Combining Beltone and CI Capital would create a company that controls about 25 percent of brokerage business in Egypt, Sawiris said.
“There’s a major crisis in the economy,” Sawiris said. “If you believe that when things get really bad, that’s when they start to get better, it’s the right time to invest,” he said. “The end game is definitely to create the largest player in Egypt.”
The acquisition of CI Capital is “purely a market opportunity because the investment, brokerage and asset management scene in Egypt was divided into one big player and lots of small and medium-sized fraction players,” he added, referring to investment bank EFG-Hermes.
In North Korea, where OTMT owns a controlling stake in mobile telephone company Koryolink, Sawiris is in talks with the government to repatriate US$120 million and solve a dispute with a state-owned peer over “unfair competition,” he said.
New economic sanctions that have been placed on the country are complicating both issues, he said.
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