EFG-Hermes Drops Most in 2 Months on CEO Travel Ban: Cairo Mover
EFG-Hermes Holding SAE (HRHO), the largest publicly traded Arab investment bank, headed for the biggest loss in more than two months after Chief Executive Officer Yasser El Mallawany was banned from traveling.
The shares of the Cairo-based firm slumped 5.3 percent to 10.92 Egyptian pounds at 12:58 p.m. in Cairo, poised for the biggest daily loss since Nov. 22. The stock plunged 63 percent last year. The EGX 30 Index, down 49 percent in 2011, lost 1 percent.
EFG-Hermes announced El Mallawany’s travel ban without providing further information. He discovered the ban while attempting to travel from Cairo to Dubai, Al Ahram reported. El Mallawany attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month.
“The news is worrying to some of the retail investors,” said Omar Darwish, an equity sales trader at Cairo-based Commercial International Brokerage Co. “But it’s too early to decide how it will bode for EFG’s operations.”
A call to El Mallawany’s mobile-phone and two calls to EFG-Hermes’ media office weren’t answered.
EFG-Hermes said a year-ago its relationship with Gamal Mubarak, a son of former president Hosni Mubarak, is limited to his 18 percent stake in its EFG Private Equity subsidiary, which contributes “no more than” 7 percent of the company’s group revenue. The investment bank also said neither EFG-Hermes nor any of the funds it manages received special privileges or consideration from the Egyptian government.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ahmed A Namatalla in Cairo at anamatalla@bloomberg.net; Alaa Shahine in Dubai at asalha@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Maedler at cmaedler@bloomberg.net
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