Egypt to sell a stake in company behind its new capital

The Administrative Capital for Urban Development (ACUD), the developer of Egypt’s new capital city, is to be listed on the country’s stock exchange within the next two years, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has confirmed.
The offering will be conducted through a fund affiliated with ACUD, which is expected to have around EGP100 billion ($6.4 billion) in liquid assets, El-Sisi said during the inauguration of several development projects in Badr City on Saturday.
The Egyptian president said this is a new concept that will be applied to other major national projects of the country as well.
The new capital east of Cairo represents a three-phase project that envisages transforming a 700 square-kilometer swath of desert — roughly equal to the size of Singapore — into a modern hub for government buildings, foreign embassies, major companies and featuring Africa’s tallest tower.

An offering of shares in the company in charge of the new capital project would “help shore up trading liquidity to unprecedented levels and add yet another heavyweight to the market’s main index,” a Bloomberg report quoted Amr Elalfy, head of research at Prime Securities, as saying.
Also, it “would help attract new local and international institutional investors, which would add more depth to the market and help reduce volatility,” Elalfy said.