CAIRO: Egypt s benchmark index plunged 4.73 percent on Tuesday to its lowest since March 2007 as foreign hedge funds continued to sell big caps, spurring retail panic, brokers said. The CASE 30 index closed at 7,184.35 points to extend its losses to about 10 percent in two days. The Hermes index fell 4.07 percent to 645.32 points while the broader CIBC index lost 4.63 percent to 384.35 points. With the international bear market, foreign institutions are selling and panicked retailers are following, said Hashem Ghoneim, CEO of El Nour Securities. The sell-off in big caps weighs on the index creating another sell-off in small caps taking the whole market down. Global investors dumped equities, oil and emerging market assets on Tuesday, unleashing a panic rush to secure short-term cash as the financial turmoil escalated a day after Lehman Brothers collapsed. Shares in Egyptian financial stocks were hit hard, with Commercial International Bank (CIB) dropping 8.12 percent to last trade at LE 38.15 ($6.98). Piraeus Bank Egypt was among the top percentage losers of the day, slumping 21.9 percent to LE 23. Greece s Piraeus Bank owns 95.35 percent of the bank. Investment bank EFG-Hermes also suffered, falling 6.79 percent to LE 39.93. Mohamed Seddiq, senior analyst at Prime Securities said that the Egyptian financial sector shouldn t be much affected by what is happening to the sector internationally. Our mortgage finance market is still very small and we don t have subprime loans, but the sentiment is down and affecting everything negatively, he said. Outside of the banking sector, market heavyweight Orascom Construction Industries, the day s most heavily traded share by turnover, lost 0.75 percent to LE 307, while real estate developer Talaat Moustafa lost 6.87 percent to LE 6.10.
