By Andrei Skvarsky.
Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital has hired Omar Gaafar, a former senior manager at Egyptian investment company Beltone Financial, as vice-president of the Moscow-based firm’s investment banking service for the Middle East and North Africa.
Gaafar will be based at RenCap’s Cairo office and report to Amr Helal, the bank’s CEO for North Africa, RenCap said in a statement.
Egypt apparently holds a special place in RenCap’s plans.
“The robust growth of the Egyptian economy bodes well for new opportunities in mergers and acquisitions and capital markets,” the statement quoted Gaafar as saying.
In April, Cape Town hosted a RenCap-organised conference during which Egyptian companies had about 150 meetings with foreign institutional investors owning total assets of about $20bn.
In a statement that month, RenCap quoted its co-CEO Ruslan Babaev as saying that in 2018 Egypt received $7.9bn in foreign direct investment, “more than any other country in Africa”, and that the total amount of foreign money put into Egyptian debt instruments rocketed 450-fold to $17bn by mid-2018 from $100m in late 2016.
April’s statement quoted the other co-CEO, Anna Vyshlova, as saying the bank had become more bullish on Egypt in 2017 and 2018 “as our analysis of adult literacy and electricity consumption showed that the country had become able to industrialise from as early as 2010, and therefore grow at between 4 and 6 per cent [per year]”.
“With a population of over 100mn, and an improving economic outlook, we find that the consumer space such as the food, healthcare, and retail sectors is where investors should seek opportunities,” Vyshlova said.
RenCap does business in about 50 markets in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, North America, Asia, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
It has sales and trading teams in London, Moscow, New York, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lagos, Nairobi, and Cairo.
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