Egypt’s EFG rebuffs buy-out offer
REUTERS
CAIRO: Egypt’s EFG Hermes poured cold water on an offer by a group of investors to buy its shares at a premium to the market price, saying they should have filed the bid with the regulator and given shareholders better assurances.
The group, called Planet IB, said on Friday it intended to offer 13.50 Egyptian pounds ($2.23) per share to buy the Cairo-based investment bank, Egypt’s biggest. Shares in EFG rose 1.2 percent on Monday to 11.15 pounds.
EFG shareholders voted on Saturday to go ahead with an earlier plan to form a joint venture with Qatar’s QInvest that would give the Qatari firm control over EFG’s main business.
“Planet IB Ltd. should have filed its tender offer to the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority ... regardless of the approval of the company’s shareholders, general assembly or the management,” EFG Chairwoman Mona Zulficar said in a statement.
Planet’s chairman, Mahmoud Abdel Latif, said EFG’s board had railroaded shareholders into voting against its offer at a time when many were out of the room watching the verdict in the trial of Egypt’s ousted leader, Hosni Mubarak.
He said Planet had already appealed to the regulator and would meet with Prime Minister Kamal Al-Ganzouri to suspend the QInvest deal temporarily to give Planet time to perform due diligence on EFG.
Alongside Abdel Latif, until recently chairman of Cairo-based AlexBank, Planet’s investors include Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris and Tariq bin Faisal Al-Qassimi, a financier in the Gulf emirate of Sharjah.
In the EFG statement, Zulficar said Planet “did not provide any legal commitment or guarantee to EFG Hermes Holding nor to its shareholders to conclude such a tender offer.”
“Additionally, no proof to availability of funds has been presented to the company nor any information about the identity of the investors who will provide the necessary funds for the tender offer,” she said.
EFG said it would distribute a dividend of 4 Egyptian pounds ($0.66) per share after it completed its joint venture with QInvest, in which the Egyptian firm would control 40 percent and the Qatari firm 60 percent.
EFG will transfer its brokerage, research, asset management, investment banking and infrastructure fund businesses to the new venture, which will be called EFG Hermes Qatar.
Egypt’s EFG rebuffs buy-out offer
