Cairo – Mubasher: Beltone Financial Holding is targeting fresh acquisitions in frontier and emerging markets, CEO Bassem Azab told Bloomberg in an interview.

"We [Beltone] spent the past two years establishing and re-positioning ourselves in investment banking, asset management, and brokerage,” Azab added.

“Now that we have our pillars reinforced on the ground, we are looking at other business lines that we want to grow,” he continued.

For his part, investment banking head Sobhy El Sehrawy said in the same interview that Beltone is projected to manage three initial public offerings (IPOs) in Egypt this year in the consumer, healthcare, and industrial sectors.

The Egyptian investment bank has applied to co-manage a share sale in Nigeria, El Sehrawy noted.

Owned by the Egyptian business tycoon Naguib Sawiris, Beltone’s capital amounts to about EGP 200 million distributed over 169 million shares at a par value of EGP 2 per share.