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Bank of Alexandria will hold an initial public offering of 15 per cent of its shares on the Egyptian stock exchange in the second half of 2008, Chairman Mahmoud Abdel Latif said on Sunday. The IPO had initially been expected to take place in the fourth quarter of 2007. Bank of Alexandria is a subsidiary of Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo. "We had to wait because timing is very important here," Abdel Latif told a news conference. "We have not agreed to a specific date or time. It will happen after the sale of Banque du Caire any time in the second half of 2008," he told Reuters later on the sidelines of the conference. Egypt is expected to sell up to 67 per cent of state-owned Banque du Caire in a public auction later this year, with another 28 per cent to be ultimately offered on the stock exchange. Abdel-Latif suggested that the Bank of Alexandria IPO would take place after the end of the third quarter, saying the bank would "have the results of the first three quarters of 2008 helping us pricing the stock". Pressed for clarification on timing, he said only that the IPO would happen in the second half of the year. Sanpaolo bought 80 per cent of the bank from the Egyptian government in October 2006 for $1.6 billion in one of the largest privatisations of the year and a landmark for reducing the role of the state in the Egyptian economy. Bank of Alexandria said it made a net profit of 681.2 million Egyptian pounds ($125.2 million) in 2007, and the total value of its assets stood at 37.62 billion pounds by the end of December. (Reuters) |
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