ATAQA bags Suez Steel MISR NATIONAL Steel Company (ATAQA) has won a deal to buy the government's 82 per cent ownership in Suez Steel at a cost of LE1.1 billion. ATAQA is also willing to buy the remaining stake owned by minority shareholders at the offered price of LE246.5 per share. Banque Du Caire, Suez Steel's major shareholder and representative of other co- owners, will receive LE300 million of the value of the deal. The remaining LE800 million will be used to repay the company's debts. ATAQA, the only Egyptian bidder, won over four short-listed competing international investors, including Indian Esaar group and Gulf Al-Tuwairqi group, Al-Rajhi Steel, and a consortium of investors from Egypt and the Gulf headed by private equity group Amwal. Both Saudi for Basic Industries and Egypt's Al-Ezz Steel Rebars withdrew from the bidding process after a memorandum of information said their studies made the acquisition economically unfeasible. Suez Steel was set up in the industrial zone in the governorate of Suez in 1997, and started production in 2000. It has a production capacity of 600,000 tonnes of steel billets a year. Euro-Med industry THE SIXTH Conference of the Euro- Mediterranean Ministers of Industry, held in Rhodes, Greece, ended last Friday after reviewing progress achieved so far among EU and Mediterranean countries to join efforts to address the challenges of globalisation and to exchange innovations in certain sectors. The Egyptian delegation, headed by Rachid Mohamed Rachid, minister of foreign trade and industry, made a recommendation by virtue of which the EU will extend financial, as well as technical, support to a number of Mediterranean countries, including Egypt, within the next five years. The aim is to ensure the transfer of technology and the know-how to the southern Mediterranean neighbours. "The EU has a greater role to play to support efforts for peace and stability in the region. Otherwise, a real industrial and economic development in the region will remain a far-fetched possibility," Rachid told the daily Al-Ahram. The conference, held every two years, was attended by 35 EU and Mediterranean countries, in addition to a large number of industrial organisations in the region. This year's event stressed the importance of implementing the Euro-Mediterranean Charter for Enterprises, promoting investment into the region, facilitating trade in industrial products and exchanging dialogue and the know-how in the sectors of textiles and clothing industry. The conference comes as part of the larger Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, launched in Barcelona in 1995. Currently, the Barcelona Process is comprising 25 EU countries and nine Mediterranean countries including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority. One of the key objectives of the partnership is to create a free-trade area among member countries by 2010. Solutions for SMEs THE RED Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh early this month hosted the Cisco North Africa and Levant Partner Forum 2006, which brought together over 500 top-level managers and ministers from North Africa and the Levant regions to discuss the future of integrated intelligent networking solutions. For the first time much focus has been given to introducing IT solutions for the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with an aim to understanding the actual need of this large sector and how it can be best served using the latest technological solutions in the market. Discussions also underlined retail, financial and educational features of the IT sector and prospects of its growth in Egypt. "Egypt is a very important market for Cisco Systems," said Mark De Simone, Cisco Systems' vice-president, Middle East and Africa, adding that, "customers in Egypt have deployed some of the most advanced network environments in the region. At the same time, there is a lot of potential for growth." It is worth noting that Cisco Systems is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Ciscoexpo 2006 is an annual forum where Cisco and its partners share their expertise and showcase their solutions to business as well as technical decision- makers, to give them an insight into how Cisco can help them to transform their businesses using the Cisco network platform and to harness the power of advanced network solutions and consultancy to enhance the way they work. The event was a good opportunity to introduce the new Channel Partner Programme, which is designed to enable customers to maximise their growth, profitability and competitive edge. "Cisco's evolving partner program gives partners the opportunity to profit from their investment in both breadth of technology offering and depth of expertise, while recognising the changing demands of customers," said Yasser Al-Kadi, Cisco Systems' managing director, Middle East and Africa. "But this is also a wake-up call to partners: those who fail to evolve their own business models will find themselves falling further behind those who can differentiate around advanced technologies and integrated solutions," he added. Over the next year, Al-Kadi emphasised that Cisco will launch three new channel partner programs that will assist and reward channel partners who deliver global resale, outsourcing and managed network service offerings to customers. These new programs will complement the existing Cisco Channel Partner Program, which primarily supports local resale offerings and will map to the distinct offerings that Cisco partners are delivering to the market. By the end of the event, an award ceremony was held to celebrate the best performing partners who were recognised for demonstrating best practices, commitment and dedication towards their customers, vendors and markets.
