THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2014
BUSINESS
Beltone Financial to
invest $42 million
Egypt’s Beltone working on four IPOs
CAIRO: Egypt’s Beltone Financial aims to invest
around 300 million Egyptian pounds ($42 million)
to expand its domestic operations next year
because it believes the worst of the country’s economic instability has passed, its chairman told
Reuters. “The entire world is open to us. I see that
the transition period in Egypt has ended. The
investment opportunities that exist domestically
are the best that can be found in the region,”
Aladdin Saba said.
“We will propose our expansion plan for 2015
to the board of directors. I envision us investing in
the non-bank financial sector by setting up new
firms, or by buying existing businesses if they
would enable us to achieve our goal and save us
time.” The optimism of Saba, who founded
Beltone in 2002, is echoed by many Egyptian financiers, who think the government is getting a
grip on Egypt’s economic problems after a threeyear slump following the revolution of 2011.
With over 200 staff, Beltone has brokerage,
asset management, investment banking and private equity operations. Foreign operations
include offices in Dubai and London. Earnings
have slumped since last year, when they were
inflated by one-off gains such as a property sale.
Consolidated net income tumbled 84 percent
from a year earlier to 11.0 million Egyptian
pounds in the first half of 2014; revenues sank 26
percent to 31.6 million pounds because of lower
fee income.
But the company has been one of the most
aggressive Egyptian financial firms in seeking to
get ahead of the expected rise in asset values in
the event of an economic recovery over the next
several years. It originally announced that it
would distribute a dividend of 7 pounds per
share for the 2013 financial year, but then suspended that decision as it sought with billionaire
Naguib Sawiris to buy a 20 percent stake in
Egyptian investment bank EFG Hermes for about
$257 million.
The purchase did not go through as the bid
consortium attracted offers of just under half of
the EFG Hermes shares which it sought. However,
that setback does not appear to have dimmed
Beltone’s ambitions. The company’s board decided this month not to distribute cash dividends
and to use the company’s liquidity instead to
fund its future expansion plans. “The decision to
distribute dividends for 2013 was made under
certain circumstances that have changed entirely,
and our policy too has changed,” Saba said in an
interview at the Reuters Middle East Investment
Summit.
“The first sign of change was the company
heading towards acquiring a stake in Hermes.
Therefore we decided, whereas our policy was to
be conservative and distribute cash dividends, to
look into expansion and investment opportunities.” He added, “We have liquidity of 120 million
pounds and this covers a portion of the expan-
sion that we are working on. There may be a new
stage of external funding for the remainder of our
investments, either through a capital increase or
through obtaining bank loans.”
IPOs
Authorities are working to revive listing activity on Egypt’s stock market, which should benefit
firms such as Beltone. Arabian Cement Co listed in
Cairo in May after raising $110 million in its initial
public offer, the first major one on the bourse for
about three years; Egyptian Exchange chairman
Mohamed Omran told Reuters this month that
the exchange expected to approve 10 listings this
year. “We are working on four new primary offerings, but all of them will occur in 2015,” Saba said
without naming the companies.
“We have an offering with a value above 1 billion pounds, and another with a value of around
750 million pounds. We can say that the aggregate
value of the four offers will exceed 2 billion pounds.”
In April, the exchange granted Beltone the country’s first licence for exchange traded funds (ETFs), a
step towards deepening trade in the stock market.
Omran said he had expected ETF certificates to be
offered earlier this year, and now believed they
would be introduced by the end of 2014. Asked
when Beltone might proceed with ETFs, Saba said:
“At the earliest. Beltone is not waiting for anything.
There are still a few minor changes being made to
the offering circular.” —Reuters
NBK announces the
Al Jawhara winners
KUWAIT: National Bank of Kuwait (NBK)
announces the three lucky winners in Al
Jawhara weekly draws during the month of
October. NBK has re-launched Al Jawhara
account by offering customers more chances
to win bigger prizes; KD 5,000 weekly, KD
125,000 monthly and a grand prize of KD
250,000 quarterly. Jumnah Bhinderwala
Bahia, Minors Ghezlan Nawaf Al Saqobi and
Lamar Tareq Al Sarraf each won KD 5,000. Al
Jawhara is one of Kuwait’s leading cash prize
accounts offering numerous benefits to its
customers.
Not only is it an interest-free account
with regular deposit and withdrawal privileges, it also entitles account holders to
enter the weekly, monthly and quarterly Al
Jawhara draws. Each KD 50 in an Al Jawhara
account entitles the customer to one
chance in any of the draws. All prizes are
automatically credited to the winners’
accounts the day after the draw. The more
money held in your Al Jawhara account, the
greater your chances of winning. Al Jawhara
accounts are available to both Kuwaitis and
Expats and can be opened at any of NBK’s
branches around Kuwait. NBK pioneered
many firsts in both the local and regional
markets by offering innovative products
and value added services. For more information please contact NBK Call Center 1
801 801 or log on to www.nbk.com
Al Mazaya Holding
records 585% jump
Sultan Telecom and subsidiaries
receive ISO 9001:2008 Certificate
KUWAIT: Sultan Telecom, a subsidiary of The Sultan Center is
a leading telecommunications solutions company, yesterday
announced that it has been certified as ISO 9001:2008 compliant for all of its operations after a thorough analysis of its
quality system by UKAS Management Systems, a global
independent certification body. ISO 9001:2008 sets criteria
for a quality management system that must be met in order
to gain certification. Accepted worldwide as the standard
that defines quality, ISO 9001:2008 provides the necessary
framework to improve company efficiency, minimize risk
and maximize opportunity. ISO has over 19,500 international
standards covering almost all aspects of technology and
business.
“Sultan Telecoms’ ISO certification is a coming-of-age significance that the company is a credible telecommunications solutions provider for its customers. The certification is
an important achievement because it separates those nascent in technology versus those who can really deliver complex solutions that can be used today.” said Mamoun Sweis,
Director of Sultan Telecom.
Mr. Sweis added that because of the company’s long
standing performance, it has been able to quickly achieve
and bring up the performance of its subsidiaries. “We have
been able to get our subsidiaries, ArabianITS & ATCO to also
be certified for ISO 9001:2008”, he added. The typical time to
implement an ISO 9001:2008 compliant quality management system is between 6 to 18 months, but Sultan Telecom
and its subsidiaries completed the journey in 5 months.
“Attaining ISO 9001:2008 certification is a testament to
the hard work and dedication of our colleagues” said
Ravinder Talwar, Senior Project Manager for Sultan Telecom.
Shibu Pallickal, Lead ISO Manager said “This notable certification speaks of our continuous passion to innovate in our
industry, provide first-class solutions for our customers and
ensure that the Sultan Telecom brand and our technology
solutions remain synonymous with un-matched quality”. “By
receiving this certification, our customers and partners are
assured that they are working with a company that is committed to the highest standards of operations.” said Naveed
Ahmed, ArabianITS Manager.
Top mortgage firm
accused of abuses
NEW YORK: One of the nation’s largest
servicers of home loans may have denied
struggling borrowers the chance to fix
loan problems and avoid foreclosures,
New York’s financial regulator has
alleged. An investigation by the state’s
Department of Financial Services found
that Ocwen Financial Corp. inappropriately backdated foreclosure warnings
and letters that rejected mortgage loan
modifications, making it nearly impossible for borrowers to appeal the company’s decision. Many borrowers who had
fallen behind on loan payments also
received warning letters months after the
deadline for avoiding foreclosure had
passed, department investigators found.
Potentially hundreds of thousands of
backdated letters may have been sent to
borrowers, likely causing them “significant harm,” Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s
Superintendent of Financial Services,
wrote in a letter to Ocwen released
Tuesday.
“Ocwen’s indifference to such a serious matter demonstrates a troubling corporate culture that disregards the needs
of struggling borrowers,” Lawsky wrote in
the letter to company’s general counsel.
In a statement, Atlanta-based Ocwen
blamed software errors in the company’s
correspondence systems for generating
improperly dated letters. The latest
claims of wrongdoing against Ocwen
come less than a year after the company
agreed to reduce struggling borrowers’
loan balances by $2 billion as part of a
settlement with federal regulators and 49
states over foreclosures abuses.
It’s the most recent evidence that
many of the same kinds of abuses that
made the housing crisis and the Great
Recession worse are still happening
some seven years after the housing bubble burst. Subprime mortgage lenders
thrived during the real estate boom
years, as many borrowers turned to a
variety of nontraditional, riskier loans
when they couldn’t qualify for traditional,
fixed-interest mortgages requiring down
payments. But it all began to unravel in
2007, as defaults started to pile up. That
eventually triggered a mortgage meltdown that sent foreclosures soaring and
propelled the US housing market into its
worst skid in decades.
In the years since, companies like
Ocwen have been enlisted to handle
payment collection on behalf of banks
and, in many cases, investors who own
securities backed by bundled home
loans. They also handle customer services, loan modifications and foreclosures.
Such companies have also been criticized
for not helping homeowners quickly
enough - resulting in delays that lead to
more fees and profits for servicers. Many
have been the target of consumer lawsuits. Some mortgage-servicing companies processed foreclosures without verifying documents. Ocwen is the fourthlargest mortgage servicer in the country
and the biggest that isn’t a bank. It specializes in servicing high-risk mortgages.
At the start of this year, it managed $106
billion worth of subprime mortgages,
according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a
mortgage industry tracker.
The New York Department of
Financial Services launched a probe into
Ocwen in August amid allegations that
the company overcharged struggling
homeowners on a product called forceplaced insurance, which servicers force
borrowers to buy if they don’t maintain
voluntary homeowners’ insurance. If
mortgage borrowers don’t pay up for
newly purchased insurance, Ocwen forecloses on their homes. Among its latest
findings, the regulator determined that
Ocwen failed to investigate the backdating of its letters to borrowers nearly a
year after an employee raised questions
about the practice. The letter did not
specify whether the backdating was
intentional or the result of poor oversight by Ocwen. “The existence and pervasiveness of these issues raise critical
questions about Ocwen’s ability to perform its core function of servicing loans,”
Lawsky wrote in the letter. In its statement, Ocwen said initially that its systems generated improperly dated letters
to 283 of its borrowers in New York. It later said it is aware of additional borrowers, but didn’t specify.. The company
added that it is investigating two other
cases and cooperating with the New
York regulator.
“We believe that we have resolved
the letter-dating issues that have been
identified to date, and we continue our
investigation as to whether there are
additional letter-dating issues that need
to be resolved,” the company said. A
company spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for details on
how many Ocwen borrowers nationwide
received backdated letters or lost their
homes as a result of the delayed warning
letters. Ocwen’s stock slumped $4.78, or
18.2 percent, to $21.48 Tuesday. The
stock is down 61 percent this year. —AP
KUWAIT: Al Mazaya Holding Company
has announced its financial results for
the first nine months of the year 2014,
after a Board of Directors meeting held
on Tuesday, October 21, in the presence of Chairman of the Board of
Directors Rashid Jacob Al Nafisi, the
Board members and CEO. On this
occasion, Eng Ibrahim Abdulrahman
Al Saq’abi, CEO of Al Mazaya Holding
Company, said that Al Mazaya Holding
had continued throughout the first
nine months of 2014 to achieve excellent positive progress in its financial
results.
The company recorded net profits
of KD 5.662 million over the period,
compared to KD 0.827 million over
the same period in 2013, and profitability of 9.14 fils per share, compared to 1.33 fils for the same period
in 2013. This was achieved by virtue of
its focus on operational activities as it
increased the occupancy rate in its
income-generating projects, which
led to an increase in the rental revenues of the company by 36.2 percent, valued at KD 3.883 million by the
end of the third quarter of 2014, compared to KD2.850 thousand for the
same period in 2013.
This included the Sky Gardens
Project in Dubai International
Financial Centre, in which the occupancy rate reached 99 percent, and
Al-Mazaya Towers at the heart of the
Kuwaiti capital, with an occupancy
rate of 100 percent, in addition to its
projects in a number of the region’s
countries such as the KSA and the
UAE, in which the occupancy rates of
the company’s projects reached 100
percent. The company also succeeded
in achieving an increase in its operational revenues resulting from managing others’ projects.
Al-Saq’abi stressed that Al- Mazaya
was able to achieve good revenues
from the sale of the last residential villas in “The Villa” project in Dubai Land,
which are currently being delivered to
clients, and the Office Spaces Project
in “Mazaya Business Avenue, with revenues from sale properties amounting
to KD 10.889 million, and total operating revenues amounting to KD 15.299
million as on September 30, 2014.
Financial results
Speaking about the company’s
financial results over the first nine
months of 2014, Al- Saq’abi said that
the company was able to maintain
steady growth in its operational performance and net profit, in line with
its carefully plotted smart objectives. Reviewing the rest of the company’s financial statements for the
past nine months, he pointed out
that the company ’s total assets
amounted to KD233.867 million,
compared to KD216.438 million during the same period in 2013. The
shareholders’ equity added up to
KD104.642 million by the end of the
third quarter of 2014, compared to
KD99.815 million for the same period in 2013, which represents a 15.2
percent rise.
Nine months achievements
Speak ing about Al-M azaya’s
Eng Ibrahim Abdulrahman
Al Saq’abi
major achievements during the first
nine months of 2014, Al-Saqabi said
that: The company has pushed up
the timetable for development of AlM azaya Logistics in Bahrain - a
group of industrial units for rent in
Bahrain I nvestment War f, wor th
more than KD 6 million - in order to
speed up the operating-leasing
operations, which will have a positive impact on the company’s revenues at the end of 2014. It also
achieved positive results to implement the “Queue-Point” Project in
Dubai Land, consisting of 25 building currently under development, as
the company delivered numerous
residential units in the project.
l Al Mazaya acquired a new land
in the “Sabah Al Salem” area in
Kuwait, which spans 2000 square
meters over a strategic location, in
order to build a sophisticated medical center in line with the “Clover”
Medical Project in Jabriyyah. - Al
Mazaya designed a new residential
projec t on its own land in Al
Mawaalih (Seeb District) in Muscat,
an area of 23,193 square meters,
which is intended to be tendered to
the contractors to start the development process. - Al Mazaya designed
four new buildings in the Emirate of
Dubai (Dubai Land). The project is
expected to be completely implemented by the end of 2017.
l Al Mazaya participated in the
largest real estate event in the
Middle East (Cityscape-Dubai), confirming its continued presence
among the region’s major real estate
companies, after having put forward
a number of projects for sale and
lease. -Al Mazaya announced its
entry into the Turkish Real Estate
Market, by establishing a Turkish
company, ‘Mazaya Turkey Real Estate
Investment’ and appointing a CEO, in
a promising step to geographically
expand and benefit from the promising investment opportunities in the
new market. - Al Mazaya signed an
alliance agreement with Domankaya
Real Estate Company - one of the
giant real estate development companies in Istanbul - whereby Al
Mazaya develops joint ventures, taking advantage of the experience of
the Turkish company and its position
in the Turkish real estate market.
l Al-Mazaya had broadened its
relations with many banks and
investors in order to enter into strategic partnerships for the development
of its new projects in the Gulf region
and the Middle East. It has also prepared extensive studies for the local,
Gulf and regional markets, as a preliminary step to engage in the sectors
that will achieve the required returns
with a limited risk rate, benefitting
from the company’s previous experience and the current market factors. Al-Saqabi concluded that Al-Mazaya
still has numerous investment opportunities under consideration, which
are going to see light in the near
future according to the company’s
strategic plan.
Al Tijaria invests in Turkey Farmlands
KUWAIT: Abdulfattah Marafie Chairman & Managing Director at
Al Tijaria Real Estate Company said
that the company has entered a
new investment in the Republic of
Turkey for an amount of $10
Million. The Turkish market is considered one of the strongest producing and exporting markets in
agricultural products in the world.
The main objective of this investment is to buy and develop pretargeted farmlands in an area of
10 million m2.
In the same context, Al Tijaria
Real Estate Company has taken
the needed safety procedures
required to preserve the rights of
its shareholders while maintaining
the lowest risk levels and taking
into consideration a Conservative
Exit Policy. The investment period
is 8 years - from the date the proj-
ect started with the possibility of
extending it for two more years.
The investment begins with two
years of developing and cultivating the land, then 6 years to produce the agricultural crops. The
salient feature of this investment
Abdulfattah M R H Marafie
is the existing need and demand
from Turkish and international
markets for such products.
In addition to that, Al Tijaria has
partnered with one of the international companies specialized in
the production and exporting of
concentrated juices which in turn
will buy and market the agricultural crops resulting from this
project. He also added that this
type of investment comes within
the company’s policy in investing
in good and various projects in
terms of sectorial or geographical
distribution where all the company’s investment results in good
returns and in stable markets
which gets along with the conservative policy of risks management
adopted by the company’s board
members in addition to adding a
value to the shareholders rights.