Beltone Financial to list Egypt index tracker fund on Nasdaq Dubai

CAIRO -23 August 2017: Beltone Financial plans to list its Egyptian index tracker fund on the Nasdaq Dubai exchange and aims to quadruple the fund's value within a year, a company official said.

The EGX 30 ETF fund, which is already listed on Egypt's stock exchange, is now valued at 55 million Egyptian pounds ($3 million). It was revived after the central bank floated the pound in November as part of Egypt's $12 billion International Monetary Fund programme to boost the economy.

"We saw large flows into the fund after the liberalization of the exchange rate," Beltone's asset management director, Kareem Naema, told Reuters.

The fund, which tracks Egypt's blue-chip stock index , closed trade on Tuesday at 13.85 Egyptian pounds, compared with 10 Egyptian pounds in January 2015 when it was first traded.

"We've been working over the past three months on listing the index fund on the Nasdaq Dubai. It's going to be a good step for Egypt and to attracting investments to the Egyptian financial market," Naema said.

Beltone hopes to increase liquidity in the fund and attract Gulf investors through the listing.

It plans to hold investor events in the Gulf, Europe and the United States in September and October in its bid to quadruple the fund's value over the next 12 months, Naema said.

He said that Beltone, which manages assets valued at about 30 billion Egyptian pounds, is now finalising the technical steps of the Dubai listing.