Egypt’s Qalaa Holdings has hired the investment bank EFG Hermes to look into the possibility of selling off its remaining food businesses as part of its efforts to return to profitability.
The Cairo-based investment firm, which has about US$9.5 billion of assets under management, said it was seeking to sell Rashidi El Mizan, which sells tahini products, and Dina Farms, the largest private dairy farm in Egypt, thanks to a pick-up in merger and acquisition activity in the food business.
The US cereal maker Kellogg last month bought a majority stake in the Egyptian biscuit maker Bisco Misr after a bidding war with the Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj Capital.
“In this context, we have been approached by more than one party interested in potential transactions regarding our key investments in the agrifoods sector; we have a clear duty to shareholders to fully explore our options in this respect,” said Ahmed Heikal, the Qalaa chairman and founder.
“This will hasten our return to profitability, which we would now anticipate in 2015 as opposed to next year, as we had originally envisioned.”
The firm has incurred four years of annual net losses since 2010, after the 2008 financial crash and the Egyptian protests in 2011 that left the country’s economy in tatters.
mkassem@thenational.ae
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