Egypt's Citadel to list shares on exchange

Egyptian private equity firm Citadel Capital, which manages $8.3 billion in investments, will soon list its shares on the Egyptian Exchange, Al-Mal newspaper wrote in its Sunday edition, without citing a source.

The listing will allow some of Citadel's shareholders to liquidate part of their positions and help the company raise new capital easily as it grows, Egypt's HC Securities wrote last week in a pre-listing report on Citadel.

"Citadel plans to undertake a $200 million rights issue after its listing," HC wrote in the report.

Citadel Capital had no comment on the reports.

The company has said in recent press statements that it was monitoring financial markets for an IPO of its own shares or those of companies it has set up.

Citadel has created 17 companies to invest in the Middle East and Africa, each specialising on a specific economic sector.

It has been raising money for two new funds that will be used to create another two companies in the coming months, Citadel Chairman Ahmed Heikal told Reuters in an interview last month.

Citadel has a capital of 3.31bn Egyptian pounds ($606m), the company said in a statement sent to Reuters by email.

Citadel was clarifying an earlier figure, in which HC Securities indicated the share capital was 661.6m pounds. The 661.6m figure was the number of shares, and not the capital, Citadel said.

HC officials were not available for a comment.

In a best-case scenario, the company's market capitalisation would be 16.55bn pounds post-listing, and in a worst-case scenario 7.75bn pounds, the HC report estimated.

Some 40 per cent of the shares are by Citadel Capital partners, the HC report said.