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"Investment in Egypt: Challenges and Opportunities"
The American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, in conjunction
with Merrill Lynch International, held a conference on "Investment
in Egypt: Challenges and opportunities" in London on June 27,
1996. The conference was a direct follow-up to the one-day
conference held in New York on March 7 during AmCham's annual
DoorKnock mission to the United States.
The New
York conference was co-sponsored by Goldman Sachs & Co. and the
Bank of New York. After the success of that event, Merrill Lynch asked
the Chamber to host a similar conference in London, which is the
center for international financial institutions dealing with the
Middle East. Nearly 200 international debt and equity investors, fund
and asset managers, senior representatives of international companies,
and media representatives attended the conference. Dr. Mohieddin
El Ghareeb, minister of finance, and Dr. Youssef Boutros-Ghali,
minister of state at the Cabinet of Ministers for Economic Follow-up,
accompanied the 30 AmCham delegates.
Discussions
focused on the prospects and potential of Egypt's economic reform
program. Ismail Hassan, governor of the Central Bank of Egypt,
outlined the development of the banking system and Egypt's monetary
policy, while Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, chairman of the National Bank of
Egypt, spoke about the role of Egyptian banks as a driving force for
growth. M. Shafik Gabr, AmCham president and chairman and managing
director of Artoc Group for Investment & Development, spoke about
investment in Egypt. Senior executives of Merrill Lynch promoted
Egypt's positive, long-term investment outlook and distributed a
detailed research report to the attendees explaining why Egypt is an
emerging market worthy of investigation. The current state of Egypt's
capital market was discussed by a group of panelists, and the CEOs of
Mantrac, British Gas and Xerox Egypt were also on hand to discuss
their experiences of doing business in Egypt.
The conference was composed of five sessions: "Egypt's
economic environment," chaired by Dr. Ahmed Shawki, AmCham
executive vice president and managing partner, Shawki & Co.,
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International; "Capital markets and
privatization," chaired by Gamal Moharam, AmCham board member
and chief representative of the Bank of New York; "Egyptian
financial strategies and economic forecast," chaired by Gabr;
"Egypt's capital market today," chaired by Dr. Ahmed Heikal,
managing director of the Egyptian Financial Group; and "Direct
investment in Egypt," also chaired by Shawki.
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