Beltone to start $1 bn fixed income fund

Reuters

Egyptian financial services group Beltone Financial will launch a $1 billion investment fund in fixed income instruments in September, its chief executive officer told Reuters on Monday.
The investment bank aims to raise $150 million to $200 million in the fund’s first phase, Bassem Azzab said in a telephone interview. The fund will seek to attract Gulf and European investors as well as those in the United States.
“We have already begun talks with investors in Europe and there’s a lot of interest. We’re targeting between $150-200 million in the first phase of the investment fund out of a targeted capital of $1 billion,” Azzab said.
Appetite for Egypt’s domestic debt has increased since November when the central bank floated the pound currency as part of a $12 billion International Monetary Fund programme aimed at boosting the economy. The central bank has raised interest rates by 700 basis points since the float.
Total foreign holdings in Egypt’s debt instruments have as of August 8 reached $15.25 billion, according to the finance ministry.
Azzab also said Beltone, Egypt’s largest asset manager, aims to acquire brokerages in Egypt and frontier markets.
“We aim to become the number 1 or number 2 in the Egyptian brokerage sector during 2018,” he said.
He expects the company to manage the initial public offering of a pharmaceutical company worth over $56.37 million on the Egyptian stock market before the end of 2017.