Monday 27 February 2012

EFG-Hermes Starts Iraq Equity Swaps to Meet Investor Demand - Businessweek

EFG-Hermes Holding SAE, the biggest publicly traded Arab investment bank, started offering an equity-swap product linked to Iraqi securities, potentially allowing investors to benefit from the nation’s recovery from decades of war and sanctions.

“Despite the prevailing risk-averse nature of investment in the Middle East and North Africa region, we have seen a high level of demand for access to this new frontier market,” said Julian Bruce, the Dubai-based director of institutional sales trading at EFG-Hermes. The product will remove “both the domestic Iraqi broker counter-party risk and the labor-intensive procedures involved in domestic execution.”

Almost a decade after a U.S.-led invasion toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s economy is set to expand 12.6 percent in 2012, the fastest among MENA countries, according to the International Monetary Fund. Regional markets were hurt last year amid uprisings that ousted leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and investor concern Europe’s debt crisis may spread.

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