Chairman Mohammed Hassan Omran talks to The Daily Star Egypt about the recent bid and future plans CAIRO: The number that the Etisalat-led consortium offered to win the third mobile network license is still having its effect on the market. The consortium won the bid by putting forth a LE 16.7 billion offer, exceeding all …

CAIRO: Egyptian shares surged on Wednesday after Egypt s third mobile license sold for $2.9 billion at an auction, a price that exceeded expectations and injected confidence into the market, traders said. Telecoms shares were up across the board after the United Arab Emirates Etisalat won Tuesday s auction with its LE 16.7 billion bid. …

CAIRO: Shares in existing Egyptian mobile phone operators jumped sharply on Tuesday on reports of higher bids than expected for the country s third mobile license. Mobinil shares surged 31 percent to LE 170 pounds as news leaked out from the site of an auction for the license. Vodafone Egypt, the other existing operator, rose …

CAIRO: The median overnight interbank rate on the pound rose to 8.25 percent on Tuesday from 8.11 percent on Monday at the start of a new two-week period for calculating bank reserves. Four out of nine banks contacted by Reuters had traded overnight money at rates between 8.2 and 8.35 percent, compared with a range …

CAIRO: The much-anticipated bid for the third mobile license was awarded to the Etisalat consortium, which offered LE 16.7 billion, plus six percent of annual revenues paid to the government as license fees. Besides the UAE telecom operator, the consortium includes Egyptian partners Egypt Post, National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and Commercial International Bank (CIB). …

Kuwait-based communication company MTC may pullout of the competition over the third mobile phone operation license in Egypt, which is due to start on Tuesday. The news has not been denied by Mohammed Eid, the company’s Cairo office manager who said the circumstances surrounding the deal perhaps would hike up auction prices to extreme levels …

CAIRO: Wild speculation about the likely winner of an auction of Egypt s third mobile license stimulated trade on the stock exchange on Monday, but most of the companies competing in the auction ended the day down. The market as a whole closed slightly higher as an extension of what one broker called a technical …

CAIRO: Egypt s Central Bank has merged three banks into a new bank called the United Bank, to which it has granted a LE 3 billion ($520 million) loan, the central bank and an Egyptian newspaper said. In a statement posted on the Cairo stock exchange Web site, the central bank said it had merged …

Egyptian stocks failed to break out of their recession over the past week trading, moving up and down within a narrow band with sluggish trading volume as investors showed little desire to sell off their holdings at extremely low prices. Shares of the Egyptian American Bank, however, were among the short list of best performers, …

Factories in the free zone complain of lack of manpower CAIRO: Despite the unemployment crisis that plagues many of Egypt’s poorer governorates, the governorate of Port Said is claiming that it suffers from a lack of human resources needed to work in the factories that are being set up for investment projects in the free …

CAIRO: Piraeus Bank in Egypt has approved a proposal to set up a new brokerage firm in the Cairo & Alexandria Stock Exchanges with a total capital of LE 5 million ($879,000). Gamal Moharram, the chief executive of Piraeus Bank-Egypt, told NOOZZ on Tuesday that his bank would submit an application to the Capital Market …

CAIRO: In the last year, Sinai’s largest resorts, Sharm El Sheikh and the beach resort of Dahab were targeted by suicide bombers seeking to de-rail Egypt’s economy by targeting the country’s vital tourist industry. Tourism in Egypt is directly linked to the national economy, making tourists a symbolic target for terrorists operating in the region …

CAIRO: Egypt s bourse nudged lower on Tuesday in the absence of company news to stimulate investors who were awaiting earnings results and the result of bidding for Egypt s third mobile license, traders said. Individual stock performance was mixed. Investment bank EFG-Hermes held its ground after a recent series of falls to end 0.4 …

CAIRO: According to a World Bank survey of 100 countries, Egypt ranked as the number one economy in terms of trade policy reforms. Actual GDP growth was estimated by the report at 4.9 percent for 2005, up from 4.2 percent for 2004 and 3.1 percent for 2003. There are expectations for GDP growth to reach …

CAIRO: The Egyptian Export Promotion Center held its first board meeting on Monday, during which producers and government officials discussed sector-specific export objectives and results for the past year as well as factors inhibiting growth. Haytham Ahmed Deyab, the center s executive director, outlines the center s three main objectives: to double exports in the …

PARIS: French-Spanish tobacco group Altadis is confident about its prospects and is examining possible deals in Egypt and Algeria, the company s chairman said in a newspaper interview published on Monday. Jean-Dominique Comolli told French paper La Tribune that despite difficult market conditions, Altadis was confident over its strategy and said the company could maintain …

Privatization process aimed at banking continues CAIRO: Thirteen European, Arab and Egyptian financial institutions are expected to submit their technical valuation for buying a 75 percent to 80 percent stake in Bank of Alexandria (BOA) by the end of the first week in July. They will also submit their preliminary financial bids to the Central …

CAIRO: The pace of the progress on the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership will increase during the second half of this year as Finland assumes the European Union presidency next week. Hannu Halinen is Finland s ambassador to Egypt and expects the initiative to enter an active phase with several ministerial meetings due to take place in the …

Reuters TUNIS: North African and East Mediterranean countries are expected to voice commitment to economic reforms in exchange for billions of euros in European Union (EU) aid at a meeting in Tunis on Sunday and Monday. The gathering of EU finance ministers and their counterparts from the southern and eastern Mediterranean is the latest of …

Annual event stresses the importance of giving producers their share CAIRO: The second annual Fair Trade Egypt event, which is slated to last until the end of the month, opened Wednesday at the Al Sawy Cultural Center, and will host a number of conferences that aim at spreading awareness among Egyptians as to what fair …

Company’s preference remains selling the gas to Egypt CAIRO: British Gas was to resume talks with Israel Thursday on the country s possible purchase of Palestinian gas discovered off the shores of the troubled Gaza Strip, a company official told AFP. BG Managing Director for the Mediterranean Basin and Africa Stuart Fysh was expected in …

CAIRO: The testing of a computer system for short-selling stocks will begin on June 2 and is expected to be completed by September, after which investors will be able to sell stocks they do not own. Regulations to allow the short-selling of certain stocks were introduced earlier this year, and the implementation of the new …

The Egyptian government started communications with the Jordanians to abrogate the imposition of 13 percent tariffs on Egyptian exports of furniture to Jordan, according to Sayed Abul Qomsan, first undersecretary of the Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Industry. Abul Qomsan stressed in a statement at the beginning of the week that we should figure out …

CAIRO: Intel Corporation and Raya Academy announced, Tuesday, collaboration for specialized training programs targeted at software developers and architect communities. Under this collaboration, which is the first to be announced worldwide, Intel and Raya Academy will launch a series of training programs that will initially include a three-day, in-depth multi-core programming training featuring lab sessions. …

Council formed to address GAFTA rules of origin CAIRO: Arab trade ministers met in Cairo on Tuesday to address common product standards issues and form a negotiation group at the World Trade Organization. Product standards were one of the topics covered in the meeting of 20 officials in a ministerial meeting of the Arab Industrial …

CAIRO: Egypt s Bassily family has made a preliminary agreement to sell its 93 percent stake in Amoun Pharmaceuticals for at least LE 2.6 billion ($451 million), the chairman said on Wednesday. Sarwat Bassily, who founded Amoun in 1998, told Reuters he was offering the company for sale because at the age of 66 he …

Reuters CAIRO: The pace of Egypt s economic reform has slowed down as the government faces tough political choices on cutting spending and finds it harder to sell state-owned firms on a depressed stock market. Reiterating the slogan Egypt is open for business, ministers have pledged to continue reforms praised by institutions including the IMF. …

CAIRO: The median overnight interbank rate on the pound rose to 8.24 percent on Tuesday from 8.058 percent on Monday, sidelined by a Central Bank auction of seven-day certificates, bankers said. The bankers said liquidity was lower because banks had little interest in dealing in the interbank market due to a preference for the Central …

CAIRO: The American University in Cairo (AUC) will establish a finance lab that will be connected directly to the Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchange (CASE) The facility, which will include a simulated trading room, is being funded by a donation of $250,000 by Citadel Capital. It will, in effect, recreate the environment of the Cairo …

CAIRO: With approximately two million small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country, and more popping up on the radar, increasing importance has been placed on the SME sector in Egypt and its role in job creation and export promotion. Unfortunately, not many SMEs are making it big because the government, in its efforts to …