Banque Misr to borrow $250mn, grow in Africa

Bloomberg

Banque Misr SAE is seeking to borrow $250 million from international lenders this year to boost financing at home, while it presses on with plans to expand into three countries it’s targeting in sub-Saharan Africa.
Egypt’s second-largest state-owned lender will use the debt to finance small- and medium-size enterprises, among other purposes, Chairman Mohamed Eletreby said in an interview. Banque Misr expects a further boost in liquidity when it sells a stake in Banque du Caire in the first half of the year.
“We are in talks with two international institutions on loans with competitive interest rates,” Eletreby said at his Cairo office, declining to identify the banks. The lender is holding direct negotiations without an adviser, seeking to secure $150 million from one bank and $100 million from the other.
Egypt’s central bank has given approval for Banque Misr to open a branch in war-torn Somalia — an unusual step for a foreign lender — while it’s also seeking to enter Kenya and the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, either via branches or representative offices, Eletreby said. It already has branches in the United Arab Emirates and France, units in Lebanon and Germany, and representative offices in China, Russia, South Korea and Italy.
Banque Misr is benefiting from sweeping reforms enacted by Egypt over the past three years.

that helped revive economic growth which stalled in the wake of the 2011 uprising.