Turkey’s Is Bankasi Conducts Due Diligence On Piraeus Bank Egypt

Turkiye Is Bankasi AS visits Cairo to conduct due diligence to evaluate Piraeus Bank-Egypt before acquisition talks, this step came after Standard Chartered decided not to proceed in acquiring the Greek bank’s arm in Egypt last November.

Senior officials at Piraeus Bank told Amwal Al Ghad that Central Bank of Egypt chose Turkiye Is Bankasi to conduct due diligence, after five banks offered to acquire the bank. The Turkish bank sent its representatives at mid April to conduct negotiations and the deal is destined to be determined by the end of May.

Parent Piraeus Bank in Greece earlier selected Barclays Capital as a financial consultant to sell its unit in Egypt, as part of its efforts towards getting the required liquidity to overcome the Greek debt crisis and its implications on the bank. Barclays Capital prepared a memorandum of information for offering Piraeus Bank Egypt for sale last March.

Turkiye Is Bankasi was selected because of its strong position in the Turkish market, strong solvency level and clear strategic vision about expansion in Egypt on Turkish government’s encouragement for investors to expand in Egypt.

Turkiye Is Bankasi established its representative office in Cairo in 2009, being the third largest international branch. Turkiye Is Bankasi currently operates more than 1000 branches in Turkey, a branch in London, a representative office in Shanghai in China and subsidiary offices and branches in Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland and Gulf countries.

Amwal Al Ghad earlier exclusively published in April the first investments of the Turkish bank in Egypt when its representative office was performing required studies to participate in financing AGCO company for Paper Industries with US$ 100 million to establish new paper mill in Upper-Egypt. AGCO Company received a formal offer from the Turkish representative office before last year’s revolution.

Eng. Osama Mahmoud, Managing Director of AGCO, said the investment value of the project is about US$200 million and IS Bank gave an in principle approval to finance 50% of the total value of the project, but 25th of January revolution postponed the announcement of this partnership.

Dr. Ahmed Galal El-Din, chairman of Egyptian Turkish Businessmen Association, told Amwal Al Ghad that there are 360 Turkish companies that have investments in Egypt; of which 177 are industrial companies and the other companies are services, construction and tourism companies, with issued capital of US$ 374 million; US$ 328 million of which are in the industrial sector. There are 77 Turkish textile and clothes companies in Egypt.

Turkey is expected to acquire a higher rank among countries investing in Egypt as the volume of Turkish investments in Egypt is expected to reach US$ 10 billion in the next five years and volume of bilateral trade is expected to rise to US$ 5 billion in the next five years. Turkish expansion in Egypt is conditioned on the return of security, Galal El-Din noted.

There will be a large conference next December in which Egypt hosts 100 Russian and Turkish economic persons who are representatives of 50 large companies to discuss possible methods for cooperation with Egypt in heavy industry and agricultural industry.

Egypt-Turkey Bilateral Trade From 1/1/2005 to 27/1/2011

	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Egypt’s  Exports	267	393	680	942	641	926
Egypt’s Imports	687	709	902	1426	2618	2100
Volume of Bilateral Trade	954	1102	1582	2368	3259	3026
Balance of Trade	420	316	222	484	1977	1174

 

Turkish Companies in Egypt for the period from 1/1/1970 to 27/1/2011

Ranking	Sector	Number of established Companies	Issued Capital	Capital Flow in Issued Capital	Turkish Contribution in Flow
1	Industry	177	328.11	328.11	197.82
2	Tourism	24	22.47	22.47	12.28
3	services	96	12.76	12.76	8.24
4	Construction	17	5.91	5.91	3.39
5	Communications and Information Technology	36	2.53	2.53	2.16
6	Agriculture	10	2.58	2.58	1.39
Total					225.29