Up to six companies are expected to be listed in the Egyptian stock market before year's end, Chairman of the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX) Mohamed Omran told Daily News Egypt. Four companies have already been listed in the capital market during 2014, with Arabian Cement having the largest initial public offering (IPO) since January 2011 earlier this year. The company offered 40% of its shares on the stock market. On its first day of trading, the company jumped from EGP 9 to EGP 10.39, with a trading volume of 17.3m shares. The total value of shares traded was $179.8m. Earlier this month, development and advanced technology company Masr El-Salam said that it is preparing to list its shares on the EGX by September. Chairman Khaled Khairat revealed that his company aims to publicly offer 20% of its shares, worth EGP 80m, during the first quarter of 2015. Food industry companies Edita and Domty have also announced they are planning for an initial public offering in the market. Domty further clarified that it is planning to publicly offer between 30-40% of its shares. The market lost EGP 14.4bn last Sunday and a further EGP 1.6bn on Monday. The loss continued on Tuesday, with the market shedding EGP 9.4bn. The stock market losses slowed down on Wednesday shedding EGP 149m. The slowdown did not last for long, however, as Thursday saw losses amounting to EGP 12.2bn. The total loss during that week was around EGP 37.9bn. The series of losses led EGX to request financial and operation information for listed companies. EGX said that companies need to disclose any activity that led to recent movements in the price of stocks. During his meeting with the Egyptian Businessmen's Association (EBA) on Tuesday, Omran said the losses international markets experienced was a reaction to the expectations of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The reports issued by the international institutions expected the global growth to be slower than was once expected. On 19 October, the market shed EGP 2.1bn, witnessing a drop in all its main indexes but on 20 October, the market gained EGP 1.3bn.
