Citadel Capital, (CCAP.CA), the leading private equity firm in the Middle East and Africa with US$ 9.5 billion in investments under control, confirmed today that Golden Crescent Investments Ltd., an Opportunity-Specific Fund controlled by the firm, has entered into a termination agreement that ends the previously announced sale of the National Petroleum Company Egypt Limited (NPC Egypt) to Sea Dragon Energy Inc. (Sea Dragon), a Calgary-based exploration and development company. Golden Crescent and Sea Dragon mutually agreed to enter into the termination agreement in light of uncertainty regarding the date on which the acquisition could be completed as well as ongoing economic turbulence locally and internationally. “Citadel Capital's ongoing program to rebalance its portfolio through the divestment of smaller and non-core assets continues apace," said Citadel Capital Founder and Chairman Ahmed Heikal. “While will be reviewing the future of NPC Egypt in the period ahead, our emphasis through the end of this year is firmly on tending to the growth of core platform and portfolio companies while reviewing additional divestment transactions now in the pipeline." Heikal noted that the firm added more than US$ 325 million to its balance sheet in FY11 and has deployed in the first six months of this year some US$ 100.35 million of a US$ 150 million OPIC-backed facility to fast-track growth at core investments. “We maintain a confident view on the outlook for our core investments, which made important operational and financial progress in the first half, which as we have noted in our recently released Business Review have weathered the economic fallout from the Revolution. These investments are now resuming the growth tracks on which they were moving pre-25 January 2011, with their anticipated pace of growth accelerated by our deployment of OPIC funding." Citadel Capital made US$ 121.2 million in fresh investments in 1Q12 in its own platform companies and announced last month that it had reached financial close on the Egyptian Refining Company (ERC), which is building a US$ 3.7 billion greenfield refinery that will halve Egypt's current diesel imports, result in more than US$ 300 million in annual benefits to the state and result in critical improvements in air quality while creating thousands of jobs. Source: Press Release
