CAIRO: Nagib Sawiris, the chairman of Orascom Telecom, said his company's competition over the third mobile phone operation in Saudi Arabia would be made through an alliance with Saudi Arabian Al Rajehi Group and Abdullah Kamel Group. Sawiris said on Thursday that on winning the deal, he would offer 40 percent of the third mobile phone operation in Saudi Arabia into the Saudi stock market. The Egyptian business tycoon expected the value of a third mobile phone license in Saudi Arabia to exceed that of the second operation, which recorded $3.2 billion paid by Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates. Etisalat had won the license for the second mobile phone operation in Saudi Arabia with a proposal valued at SAR12.2 billion ($3.2 billion) in a fierce competition with five alliances, including one led by Orascom Telecom. Separately, Sawiris said that talks were still on with the Italian internet service provider Tiscali on a governing stake of the heavily indebted operation. -Noozz HEAD: Italian Ensaldo wins 170 mln euros power generation deal in Cairo Italian Ensaldo Energia has won a deal to install a steam-powered facility to generate power at a southern Cairo plant, valued at 170 million euros after a fierce competition with the Japanese company Hitachi. According to a senior official at the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity, Ensaldo has won the deal after beating Hitachi with a proposal that was 40 million euros cheaper. The official said that the large price difference was unprecedented in the history of Egyptian power generation plants bids. Analysts said the bid represented a qualitative development in the Italian company s strategy to recover its earlier losses in the Egyptian market, which resulted in repeated complaints by the company to the Italian Ambassador in Cairo against the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity. The competition over the southern Cairo power plant was very close between Italian Ensaldo and the Japanese Hitachi after other competitors from the US were forced out of the race.
