ArabFinance: Egyptian Financial Group Hermes Holding (EFG Hermes) (HRHO) announced the completion of its transformation into an Egyptian universal bank with a market-leading frontier emerging markets (FEM) investment banking platform, according to a press release.

This comes following the company’s acquisition of a 51% stake in the Arab Investment Bank (aiBank) with TSFE Financial Services and Fintech Subfund, a sub fund fully owned by the Soverign Fund of Egypt, owing 25% of the bank’s capital.

It is worth noting that the National Investment Bank’s (NIB) stake in aiBank remains at 24%.

This move marks a strategic entry into the fast-growing and robust Egyptian commercial banking sector.

“The completion of the acquisition of a majority stake in aiBANK should be looked at as another step towards building a business model that can withstand the cyclicality of capital markets and increase synergies creation potential across the platform,” EFG Hermes’ CEO Karim Awad commented.

“Our efforts to geographically diversify our business means that we are now present in 13 countries with the ability to offer financial services to more than 1 billion people living and doing business in some of the world’s fastest-growing markets. The addition of a commercial bank in our home market also means that EFG Hermes Holding (through its different subsidiaries and brands) can provide its Egyptian clients with a single destination for all their financial services,” Awad added.

EFG Hermes has presence in 13 countries, with a buy-side business that manages over $4 billion of assets under management (AUMs) in public and private markets under its brands, including Vortex Energy, Egypt Education Fund (EEF), and FIM.

The company’s NBFI platform focuses in Egypt with EGP 10.9 billion lending portfolio, in addition to leading market shares in leasing, factoring, mortgage, buy-now pay-later, and microfinance.