Egypt selected five banks to manage a Eurobond sale of about $4 billion, the finance minister said, as the nation taps cheaper funding sources to bridge its budget gap.

The government selected HSBC Holdings Plc, Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi for the sale scheduled around January, Amr El-Garhy said in a phone interview on Thursday. Al Tamimi & Co. and Dechert LLP have been chosen as legal advisers. A final date for the sale has not been set, and the government may not carry out a lengthy roadshow like it did in previous sales, he said.

With yields on local treasury bills above 17 percent, Egypt is tapping international debt markets to help narrow its fiscal deficit by reducing interest expenses. It has raised $7 billion from the sale of U.S. dollar-denominated Eurobonds this year, and El-Gahry said it is planning a debut euro-denominated bond sale worth about 1.5 billion euros in the next three months. Managers for that sale will be selected “soon,” Deputy Finance Minister Ahmed Kouchouk said separately on Thursday.

The coming bond sale will also boost foreign-currency reserves as the government capitalizes on growing investor confidence since it floated the pound and cut energy subsidies last year.

The yield on Egypt’s 10-year government bonds were almost unchanged at 5.987 percent at 5:20 p.m. in Cairo.

Source:
courtesy of BLOOMBERG

by Ahmed Feteha

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