Banque du Caire was so nearly there.
The Egyptian lender was on track to complete a $500 million initial public offering in the spring of 2020. Everything was in place. Its owner, state-owned lender Banque Misr, had committed to offloading up to 30% of the Cairo-based bank.
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Underwriters HSBC and EFG Hermes had a slew of anchor investors, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Sovereign Fund of Egypt, ready to buy up to $75 million worth of available stock.
The IPO mattered on a number of levels. To the state, it would breathe new life into a privatization process that had been left to drift. It would also deepen liquidity on the Egyptian Exchange. A concurrent sale of global depositary receipts (GDRs) in London would encourage international investors to buy into a newly reenergized economy.
Then Covid hit.
When Euromoney meets him on a warm February morning at his office in Nasr City, a scruffy part of eastern Cairo, Tarek Fayed, the bank’s chairman and chief executive, is still lightly stewing over the events of the past 12 months.
