CAIRO: Egypt's leading investment bank EFG-Hermes says that despite a Wednesday suspension by an Egyptian regulator, they expect a joint venture deal with Qatar's QInvest to go ahead by October, the company said in a statement on Thursday. “The group is confident that the previously announced plan for the deal will be completed by the end of the third quarter of 2012,” EFG said in a statement on Thursday. The investment bank added that it would call another shareholder meeting in the near future to provide the additional disclosure that the EFSA required “as we are committed to full transparency.” Initially, the EFG-QInvest deal had been approved by shareholders on June 2. “The Authority approved the (shareholder) assembly in form but refused it in terms of content, procedures and decisions," the head of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA) Ashraf El-Sharkawy was quoted as saying by the state news agency MENA. EFSA rejected decisions made at EFG's annual meeting last month saying the firm did not clarify various points regarding the deal including the fate of minority rights after it is completed, MENA reported Sharkawy said. EFG must now “provide the required information and re-convene the shareholder meeting so that procedures for the deal can be completed," MENA cited Sharkawy as saying. EFG had previously said this month that the hold-up between the bank and QInvest was “legally binding and could only be reversed through legal action." EFG and QInvest sealed the deal in May to form a joint-venture, in which state-backed QInvest would hold 60 percent stake, Reuters news agency reported.
