The Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA) will look into a complaint filed by Orascom Telecom against the authority for its approval of an offer by France Telecom to buy 100 percent of mobile phone company MobiNil, which is an Orascom-France Telecom joint project.
The investigation is set to begin next Thursday.
An EFSA official said that the authority will decide about the complaint within 60 days, and that Orascom may appeal if the decision is not in its favor.
An Orascom official said France Telecom’s offer of LE245 per share is unfair to the more than 30,000 shareholders in MobiNil.
Orascom media spokesperson Manal Abdel Hamid declined to comment on the undergoing negotiations between the two holding companies.
Since the dispute was announced, only 31 MobiNil shareholders offered to sell their shares. The offers amounted to 493,000 shares out of a total of 100 million.
Motassem el-Shahidi, managing director of a securities company, said shareholders are keeping their shares until the EFSA’s financial evaluation of France Telecm is complete.
"They are also waiting for January 8, the deadline for other bidders to come up with offers for the deal," el-Shahidi said.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
