CAIRO: The general meeting of Banque Misr shareholders approved on Thursday the bank s acquisition of the entire shares of Banque Du Caire at a total value of LE 1.6 billion. The value of the bank s 400 million shares will be transferred to the account of the Ministry of Finance in its capacity of the legal owner of Banque Du Caire. The meeting also adopted a proposal to increase Banque Misr s paid-in capital to LE 3.4 billion (about $596 million) from LE 1.8 billion. The decision increases the number of the bank s shares to 680 million at a nominal value of LE 5 per share. The capital increase of LE 1.6 billion will be transferred to the account of Banque Misr at the Central Bank of Egypt from the Ministry of Finance s account. A statement released by the CBE on Thursday said shareholders of Banque Misr also approved to increase the bank s authorized capital to LE 15 billion from LE 5 billion, and paid-in capital to LE 3.4 billion. The CBE had earlier dropped the idea of merging Banque Misr and the Banque Du Caire for fundamental difficulties related to large amount of loan defaults at Banque Du Caire. The state-owned bank has failed to settle accounts with large loan defaulters, some of them have escaped Egypt, such as Ramy Lakkah, and others have been imprisoned or have died. The acquisition, however, will leave intact the independent legal status and brand name of Banque Du Caire. The general meetings of Egyptian state-owned banks had been postponed for a week on the background of observations by the Central Agency for Accounting on their performance and past year s results, especially the growth of provision funds for non-performing loans.
