CAIRO: Egyptian indexes fell on Thursday led by selling of Orascom Construction Industries and Orascom Telecom, as foreign investors took their lead from US and European markets that declined a day earlier, traders said. On Wednesday grim US retail sales data and concerns that banks need even more money to save them from collapse pulled US and European share prices down. It was a reflection of the sharp decline in the United States and Europe...and once we broke the 4,500-resistance level (on the CASE 30 index), people started selling on stop-losses, which increased today s decline, said Mohamed Tawfiq of Delta Rasmala Securities. Declining blue chips dominated trade on Thursday, with shares of market heavyweights Orascom Telecom and Orascom Construction Industries the day s first and second most heavily traded shares. Mohamed Ashmawy of CIBC brokerage said that that although selling was across the board, Orascom Construction Industries and Orascom Telecom contributed significantly to the index s decline because of their weighting on the index. The two firms together constitute about 35 percent of the benchmark CASE 30 index, and helped pull it down 3.35 percent to 4,327.01 points. Orascom Telecom, which said on Wednesday that one of its subsidiaries would buy a Namibian mobile operator for $59 million, and would sell its M-link unit for $77 million, was the day s most heavily traded share by turnover. Its shares last traded 5.53 percent down at LE 27 per share. Shares in Orascom Construction Industries, which said on Wednesday it planned to buy back up to 0.9 percent of its shares, fell 4.52 percent to LE 127.49 per share. The Hermes index lost 2.58 percent to 413.12 points. The broader CIBC index fell 2.30 percent to 297.2 points.
