EFG-HERMES HOLDING: The leading investment bank has started a buyback programme through which it will buy LE1 billion worth of its shares from investors during the first nine months of 2014. The offer will be fully funded from the company's current liquidity position. EFG-Hermes's board approved returning LE425 million “immediately” in the first phase of its buyback plan at LE11.5 pounds a share, subject to regulatory approval. The second phase will be implemented in the second or third quarter of 2014, the bank said, without giving further details. The investment bank revealed in May a plan to sell “non-core” assets and return cash to shareholders after its planned joint venture with Qatar investment bank QInvest collapsed. The Egyptian stock exchange cancelled transactions on the stock on 8 January after shares jumped by the daily limit of 10 per cent after the board's approval was disclosed. The exceptional increase in the shares' value led the exchange to suspect a leakage of information or insider trading. EGYPTIAN CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES COMPANY (KIMA): The fertilisers company has secured the approval of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority, the market regulator, to increase its paid-in capital by LE585 million. The capital increase will be executed in two phases. The first will see the company changing LE135.8 million of retained earnings to capital. The second will comprise issuing new shares worth LE450 million to existing shareholders. Commenting on the move, Pharos Holding said it was “strictly positive”. The company had needed to raise equity to finance the gap in investment costs after a cut in loan value, the investment bank explained. In mid-September 2013, the company announced the success of negotiations with a consortium of banks to finance its shift from water electrolysis to natural gas as a source of hydrogen and to rehabilitate its existing nitrates plant. The head of the Chemical Industries Holding Company, KIMA's parent company, said last week that the construction of the new plant had commenced. JUHAYNA FOOD INDUSTRIES: The dairy and juice producer inaugurated its Assiut yoghurt plant, with an investment cost of LE200 million, recently, the financial daily Al-Mal saying that the company's investments over the past three years had stood at LE1.8 billion. Juhayna is also expected to invest another LE500 million in the new plant over the next two years, provided that it proves lucrative. The company's chairman Safwan Thabet said recently that his company was not interested in new acquisitions and was not competing to acquire the public turned privately owned biscuit-maker Bisco Misr. ORASCOM CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRIES (OCI): The leading construction and cement company has failed to pay the second instalment of tax claims amounting to LE900 million that should have been paid to the tax authorities on 29 December. The instalment is part of the LE7 billion settlement that the company reached in early 2013 with the authorities on tax claims on profits OCI had realised from selling its cement unit to France's Lafarge in 2007. The former Muslim Brotherhood-backed government had listed the name of the company's founder and CEO Nassif Sawiris on the travel watch list at the time. MADINET NASR HOUSING: The local construction firm received the approval of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority to call an extraordinary general meeting to discuss increasing the company's issued and paid-in capital from LE135 million to LE155 million through the distribution of free shares. The company is currently in talks with banks to obtain a LE400 million loan in order to establish a closed compound in the Taj Sultan project with a total value of LE900 million in three years.
