CAIRO: The Central Bank of Egypt has shortlisted five potential buyers and given them the go ahead to conduct due diligence studies on state-owned Banque du Caire, the MENA news agency reported on Thursday. The five are UK-based Standard Chartered Plc, Saudi Arabia's Samba Financial Group, National Bank of Greece SA, Dubai's Mashreqbank and a consortium of Jordan-based Arab Bank Group and Saudi Arabia's Arab National Bank. According to MENA, Mohamed Barakat, Banque du Caire's chairman, said 12 potential buyers expressed interest in the bid, but the committee overseeing the sale selected the technical bids submitted by these five. In July 2007, Cabinet unveiled plans to sell Egypt's third largest publicly-owned bank, which has a 6 percent market share. The original plan was to sell an 80 percent stake, sell 15 percent through an IPO and give 5 percent to employees. The numbers were later modified, and now only 67 percent of the bank is for sale while 28 percent will be floated on the stock exchange. The decision to sell the bank has proved contentious, sparking controversy from both opposition parties and the public who fear that the bank will be sold to a foreign entity. Shortly after announcing the sale, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said he expects the privatization of Banque Du Caire to raise more than $1.6 billion. The bank was weighed down with deficit that bulks up to LE 12-14 billion, representing six times its entire capital, prompting the decision to sell as opposed to merge operations with Banque Misr, as was initially planned. The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) anticipated the revenues from the purchase of Banque Du Caire would exceed that of the Bank of Alexandria, which sold for $1.6 billion.
