Egyptian Stocks Decline to Two-Year Low, Led by Orascom Telecom

By Tarek Al-Issawi

Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Egyptian stocks fell to a two-year low, extending a global slump as investors remained concerned that the Group of Seven will not be able to resolve the international credit crisis.

Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, the biggest mobile-phone company in the Middle East, dropped to its lowest level since January 2005. El Sewedy Cables also declined.

Egypt's benchmark CASE 30 Index lost 7.7 percent, to 5,228.73, by 11:33 a.m. local time, its weakest since July 2006, according to the bourse's Web site. G-7 financial chiefs meeting in Washington refrained from unveiling new initiatives for thawing capital markets, even after the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average and benchmarks in Europe and Asia capped their worst weekly performances on record.

``Investors are afraid of committing and leading in the market and everyone is taking their cue from global and regional markets,'' wrote Tawfik Abdel Aziz, a trader at Delta Rasmala Securities, in an e-mail. ``We are heading south today.''

Orascom Telecom dropped 33 piasters, or 1 percent, to 33.17 pounds. El Sewedy Cables Holding Co., the biggest maker of electrical cables in Egypt, fell 12.3 pounds, or 14.4 percent, to 73.02 pounds.

Israel's Tel Aviv Stock Exchange delayed its opening by about an hour today after the bourse was closed for a four-day holiday weekend. Exchanges in Russia, Indonesia and Ukraine suspended trading last week in an effort to halt a rout that has wiped out $25 trillion from global equities this year.

Confidence Missing

In the past two weeks, central banks executed emergency interest-rate cuts and pumped more cash into markets, the Federal Reserve said it would buy commercial paper, European governments bailed out banks and the U.K. and U.S. said they would start taking equity stakes in financial companies.

G-7 finance chiefs on Oct. 10 refrained from specific fresh measures, such as embracing a U.K. plan to guarantee loans between banks. European leaders will today devise their own rescue package with ``meat and muscles'' when they meet in Paris for a second summit in eight days, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said.

Crude oil fell below $78 last week on concern the deepening financial crisis will push the global economy into a recession. Oil for November delivery fell $8.89, or 10 percent, to $77.70 a barrel at the New York Mercantile Exchange on Oct. 10.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tarek Al-Issawi in Cairo at talissawi@bloomberg.net