The Egyptian banking sector in numbers

The Egyptian banking sector has witnessed a major activity during the last two years, in  bothperformance and  structure levels, in the light of merging and acquisition transactions, which show the following figures:

       -- 59, number of banks operating in Egypt during the fiscal year 2004/2005 against 81 banks in 1990/1991.

       -- 2847, number of subsidiaries of banks operating in Egypt during the 2004/2005 fiscal year against 1882 in 1990/1991.

    During 2006, the banking sector in Egypt has witnessed many repurchase, absorption and fusion operations:

       -- The American investment fund "Ripplewood" took over the public shares of Commercial International Bank "CIB-Egypt" (18,7%) Price: 1,3 billion EGP, or 53,5 EGP / Action.

       -- The Lebanese bank "Oda" acquired 100% of the shares of the bank "Cairo/Far East" at a price of 542,4 million EGP

       -- The public part of the shares of Delta International Bank (19,5%) has been sold to the major shareholders of the bank with the Arab Society for Development and Investment, which has increased its shares in the bank to 14,8%.

       -- The "Islamic Bank for investments and development", "United Bank of Egypt "and" The Nile Bank" have been merged in one bank called "United Bank", entity with a capital of one billion EGP. The Central Bank of Egypt owns 99,9% of the shares of the new bank.

       -- "Calyon-Egypt", whose 75% shares belong to the French bank "Calyon", has absorbed 74,67% of the shares of the Egyptian American Bank (EAB) at a price of 2,2 billion EGP.

       -- A consortium led by National Bank of Bahrain has absorbed 89,3% shares of Delta International Bank for 1,65 billion EGP.

       -- "Ittihad National Emirati bank" has absorbed 94,6% of shares of "Alexandria Commercial and Maritime Bank", with a price of 244,5 million EGP.