CAIRO: Six European and Arab banks will place their final bids Monday for the Bank of Alexandria, Egypt s only state-owned bank to be put up for sale, banking officials said.
The bids to acquire up to 80 percent of BoA must be placed by Monday night and the envelopes containing the offers will be opened on Tuesday, vice-governor of Egypt s Central Bank Tarek Amer said Sunday.
The privatization of BoA is one of the centerpieces of the restructuring of the banking system undertaken by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif s government, which aims to reduce the number of Egyptian banks from 60 to 26.
Banking experts have estimated the final price range from $880 million (LE 4.6 billion) to $1.2 billion(LE 6.9 billion).
Candidates include Egyptian frontrunner Commercial International Bank (CIB), France s BNP Paribas, Italy s Sanpaolo, Greece s Eurobank, a joint venture of Jordan s Arab Bank and Saudi s Arab National Bank, and another partnering of Dubai s Mashreq bank and Dubai Investment Group.
Banking experts in Cairo told AFP on Sunday that the Mashreq bank-Dubai team was a likely frontrunner, followed by CIB.
With 188 branches, BoA is the smallest of the country s big four banks, following sector giant National Bank of Egypt (NBE), Bank Misr and Bank of Cairo. As of February 2006, it had assets of LE 39.8 billion ($6.9 billion), or five percent of the market.
BoA holds six percent of all customer deposits in Egypt and has 188 outlets across the country, the most populous in the Arab world.
Egyptian banking authorities eliminated in August six of the initial 12 banks in the bidding process. US-based Citigroup is advisor on the privatizations process.
The selection will take place Tuesday in the presence of banking officials, and a final signature will be made by the victor before the end of next week, Amer said.
Large Egyptian private banks have recently been bought by French banks, including MIBank by Societe Generale and Egyptian-American Bank by Calyon.
Some analysts argue this recent string of acquisitions could undermine the chances of foreign banks in the BoA bid, while others insist the price will be the deciding factor.
