Cairo, 07 March 2019 EFG Hermes, a leading financial services corporation in Frontier Emerging Markets, has successfully concluded the EGP 1.7 billion offering of 4.5% of Eastern Company S.A.E., Egypt’s leading tobacco manufacturer, in a highly anticipated equity offering that marks the first offering of a state-owned company on the Egyptian Stock Exchange in more than a decade. Eastern Company’s offering is the maiden transaction of the IPO program announced by the Egyptian government that aims at strengthening domestic capital markets and attracting international investment. EFG Hermes acted as sole global coordinator and sole bookrunner on the offering. “Eastern Company’s offering has panned out in a highly encouraging way both for Egyptian capital markets and for the Firm, with very strong appetite from both global and GCC institutional investors as well as Egyptian investors,” said Mohamed Ebeid, Co-CEO of the Investment Bank at EFG Hermes.   The transaction consisted of a private placement implemented through an accelerated equity offering and a public offering, with a total of 101,250,000 existing ordinary shares offered to investors. The private placement was 1.9x oversubscribed and public tranche 4.2x. At the offer price of EGP 17.00 per share, the institutional demand for privately placed shares generated EGP 3.2 billion. Approximately 94% of private placement demand came from international and GCC institutions, with local institutional investors accounting for the remaining 6% of total demand. “We are honored to have been part of this landmark transaction, which is the largest follow-on secondary offering on the EGX in over a decade. We have been able to utilize our position as the MENA region’s leading ECM adviser to generate a quality book of demand from global and regional institutional investors and place the shares at a premium over the pre-book building launch price, which is a reflection of investors’ confidence in the country’s long-term outlook,” said Maged El Ayouti, Managing Director at EFG Hermes Investment Banking.   “We are proud to partner with the Egyptian government in its IPO program, leveraging our longstanding role as the bridge between global capital and local investment plays in Egypt and the region,” said Maged.