Stockholm--Sweden's Electrolux said on Monday it has agreed to buy Egypt's Olympic Group, the biggest appliance maker in the Middle East and North Africa, cementing their long-standing partnership. Electrolux, the world's second-biggest maker of fridges, vacuum cleaners and cookers, said it has had a commercial partnership with Olympic in the region for the last 30 years. It said it had agreed to pay owner Paradise Capital LE45.30 per share for a 52 percent stake and launch an offer for the rest of the company on completion of the deal at the same price. Olympic's closing price on Oct. 7 was LE30.06. Paradise will also to buy two Olympic non-core assets, Namaa and B-Tech for LE13.88 and LE3.44 per share respectively. Excluding these two assets, the enterprise value of Olympic will be about 2.7 billion Egyptian pounds, Electrolux said. Electrolux said Olympic Group had sales of around LE2.1 billion in 2009 and an estimated volume market share of approximately 30 percent in Egypt. (US$1=LE5.694).
