EFG Hermes
This will surprise few readers: EFG Hermes is a constant candidate – sometimes the only surefire one – for any prize involving Egypt’s best corporate and investment bank. It was its usual busy self last year, handling deals both in Egypt and across the region including in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
During the awards period, it was present on nine equity capital markets deals worth a total of $31.4 billion, according to data from Dealogic. The deal list included nabbing a spot as a bookrunner on Saudi Aramco’s IPO in December 2019, which raised $26 billion and valued the government-owned oil company at $1.7 trillion. It was also a bookrunner on the $749 million initial public offering of Arabian Centres, the first 144a/RegS offering ever completed in Saudi Arabia.
Purely in terms of Egyptian ECM, EFG Hermes had a domestic market share of 100% in 2019. The brutal reality is that the investment house is so good at what it does, it cannot be left off deals, be they small or large.
Led by chief executive Karim Awad, the investment house has also worked hard to broaden its reach not just beyond its home market, but outside the region too.
It was a joint bookrunner on the $362 million London IPO of African telecommunications infrastructure firm Helios Towers and was a joint bookrunner on another London IPO, completed in May 2019, by Finablr, the financial holding company that owns Travelex, which raised $429 million.
It worked on six M&A deals during the awards period worth a combined $1.7 billion. It advised Suez Cement Group, a unit of Germany’s HeidelbergCement, on the $39 million sale of a cement plant in El Minya to UAE-based Emaar Industries.
EFG Hermes also completed seven DCM deals worth $462 million in Egypt and across the wider Middle East and North Africa region in 2019.