Egypt’s Beltone launches new SME venture capital arm

Egyptian investment bank Beltone Financial Holding has launched on Sunday a new venture capital arm to finance small and medium-sized businesses in the country.

Beltone, controlled by Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, had already obtained licence for the new company – named Beltone SME to bring in first-of-its-kind funding approaches for SMEs in Egypt, CEO Ibrahim Karam said in a statement.

The new entity is initially capitalized at 30 million Egyptian pounds ($1.9 million), with plans to reach up to 100 million pounds within next year, Karam added.

Beltone SME aims to establish an investment fund to finance SME projects, with total amount of capital commitment of 1 billion pounds by the end of 2021, he said.

In August, Karam told Reuters that Beltone plans to diversify into non-banking financial activities in a bid to return to profit in 2021.

The investment bank said last year it was aiming for non-banking financial activities to contribute 30-40 percent of its revenues within three years.

In November 2015, Sawiris bought Beltone Financial for about 650 million pounds. In addition to the new entity, the investment banking group, which owns branches in Europe, the United States and the Middle East, currently has 13 subsidiaries specialising in investment, asset management, and securities.

Beltone’s consolidated losses shrank by around 52 percent in the second-quarter 2020 to 12.1 million pounds, from 25.2 million a year earlier.