Misr Ins. Holding has bid for 40% of the shares that Ghazl El Mahalla Football Club will offer to institutional investors in its upcoming IPO, according to statements made by Public Enterprises Minister Hisham Tawfik published in Hapi Journal (pdf) yesterday. The state-owned giant has subscribed to EGP 15 mn worth of shares on offer in the EGP 37 mn private placement, he said.

The private placement portion of the sale is set to go through in November, the minister said, with the retail offering of the club's IPO now set to hit the market in December, after having earlier been slated for November. The sale is expected to raise EGP 135 mn, which would be done via newly-issued shares that would see up to two-thirds of the club listed on the exchange. Another EGP 98 mn will be earmarked for sale to individual retail investors, Prime Holding CEO Mohamed Maher — whose firm is quarterbacking the debut— had told us over the summer. We have more on how the sale will be structured here.

Keep this in perspective: The Ghazl El Mahalla sale is tiny, especially when compared to e-Finance’s IPO last month, which raised some EGP 5.8 bn. The e-Finance transaction has breathed new life into the state’s long dormant privatization program, with Maher earlier telling Masrawy that e-Finance’s success encouraged Ghazl El Mahalla to go ahead with its own IPO.

What other state companies are thinking of taking the plunge? Four more state-owned companies could hit the bourse before the end of the current fiscal year in June, Public Enterprise Minister Hisham Tawfik said previously. Aside from the football club, Banque du Caire is a candidate, after its IPO was postponed in the wake of covid-induced market turmoil, while e-Finance has also made clear its ambitions to list two of its subsidiaries in the wake of its successful debut last month. There are also offerings in the pipeline for several large government-owned firms beyond that date, Tawfik said.

And several private sector players have intentions to go public: Macro Pharma has plans to list, having made a last-minute u-turn on its IPO in April and subsequently hired EFG Hermes, while the parent company of healthy foods brand Abu Auf is considering floating 49% of its shares on the exchange. Non-bank financial services player Ebtikar has also said it could go to market.