[2007-11-28]  Egypt bourse flat, Medinet Nasr lifts housing stocks
Egyptian share indexes ended flat on Monday with big cap stocks mixed, while news of an offer to buy a stake in Medinet Nasr Housing boosted the housing sector, brokers said.

Egypt's Beltone Group for Investment Ltd. and Beltone Capital said they were studying an offer by Dubai's ETA Star to buy Beltone's 30.88 percent stake in Medinet Nasr for about 1.73 billion Egyptian pounds ($307.4 million).

Hazem Barakat, Chairman of Beltone Capital said the ETA Star offer was for 70 Egyptian pounds per share and that the board of the two Beltone companies will study it after updating the fair value of the stock.

Shares in Medinet Nasr, the third biggest listed company by market value, were last traded 5.9 percent up to 66.80 pounds.

Brokers said the news affected housing sector positively. Sixth of October Development and Investment gained 0.3 percent to 231.10 pounds, while Heliopolis Housing jumped 3.5 percent to 554 pounds.

Overall, the benchmark CASE 30 index was 0.2 percent down at 9,672.17 points, while the well-watched Hermes index was nearly stable at 85,696.14 points. The broader CIBC index was also near flat at 407.01 points.

An initial public offering of 65 million shares of the biggest real estate developer in Egypt, Talaat Mustafa Group, at 11 pounds per share was more than 40 times oversubscribed last week. The effects were still visible in the market.

"The market zigzagged up and down during the day as investors were reformulating their portfolios after the Talaat Mustafa IPO," Eissa Fathi Eissa of the Strategic Company for Securities said.

On the upside, regional mobile operator Orascom Telecom rose 2 percent to last trade at 84.90 pounds.

But some blue chips suffered from profit taking, one broker said, including Mobinil, which lost 0.9 percent to 217 pounds after being in the green for three consecutive sessions. ($1= 5.53 Egyptian pounds) (Writing by Wael Gamal)



Source: © Reuters 2007.