Egypt’s largest listed bank, Commercial International Bank (CIB) is seeking to sell 70 percent of its investment banking arm CI Capital to local investors in a deal that is expected to be finalised “within hours”, a source familiar with the deal told Reuters on Wednesday.
The source gave no more details.
A deal to sell CI Capital to Beltone Financial, a unit of billionaire Naguib Sawiris’s Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding, was agreed in February but later fell through after the deal failed to secure approval from the market regulator, the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority.
Sawiris said at the time he planned to merge CI Capital with Beltone Financial to create one of Egypt’s largest investment firms.
Banking sources said CIB had been seeking to find other buyers for the investment bank, whose market value they estimated at near 1 billion Egyptian pounds ($56.24 million).
