The Oman Investment Authority (OIA), the sovereign wealth fund in the Sultanate of Oman, is negotiating with the government to acquire a majority stake in the Export Development Bank of Egypt (EBank), after it was included in the government IPO programme at the end of last year.
Sources close to the situation told DNE that initial negotiations are underway between the government and OIA to acquire the bank and that a delegation from the agency visited the bank earlier this week.
The sources said that the bank is one of the companies that the government plans to exit in the first half of this year, to raise $5bn by the end of June 2024.
The bank’s ownership structure is distributed as follows: 40.75% for the National Investment Bank (NIB), which will exit its entire stake in the bank, 23.13% for Banque Misr, 19.8% for the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), an unknown stake for the Egyptian Gulf Bank (EG Bank), and the remainder as freely traded shares on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX).
The bank’s shares closed at a high point at the end of last Thursday’s trading, with a price level of EGP 24.98 per share, up by about 6%.
A few days ago, the bank’s board of directors approved the planning budget for next year, aiming to achieve profits of EGP 3.65bn this year, compared to EGP 3.07bn profits achieved in 2023.
The bank plans to achieve a net return from loans and similar income of about EGP 7.09bn this year, compared to EGP 5.42bn in 2023.
The bank expects its customer deposits to grow by EGP 10.6bn this year, reaching EGP 102.6bn by the end of 2024, compared to EGP 92.1bn last year. It also plans to increase its loan and facilities portfolio to reach EGP 64.1bn during 2024.
The bank plans to pay EGP 652m of the value of the New Administrative Capital building this year, bringing the total amount paid for the construction of the building to EGP 1.8bn.
