EFG-Hermes Hires Exotix Banker to Lead Frontier Market Expansion

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa) – EFG-Hermes Holding SAE hired former Exotix Partners LLP banker Ali Khalpey to head its frontier division as it seeks to expand into new markets.

The Cairo-based investment bank named Khalpey as chief executive officer of EFG-Hermes Frontier that will focus on securities brokerage, investment banking and research, the lender said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday. Khalpey previously worked for Exotix Africa LLP, Blackrock Inc., Investec and Renaissance Capital LLC, it said.

With growth in developed and many emerging markets still slow, an increasing number of institutional investors are making allocations to frontier markets, according to EFG-Hermes. The bank’s research division plans to increase its coverage to more than 200 stocks from 155 currently.

“Seven of the 10 fastest growing markets in the world are frontier,” Mohamed Ebeid, co-head of securities brokerage at EFG-Hermes said in the statement. “There’s a natural fit between continuous capital flows into emerging markets as investors seek growth — on the one hand — and a large and growing universe of companies in the frontier space that are seeking capital, on the other.”

EFG-Hermes is in the final stages of an “acquisition of an on-the-ground presence in Pakistan” and this year plans to “accelerate the roll out of the platform as we open new markets and businesses on the ground,” it said. The bank made a tender offer on the Pakistan Stock Exchange for Karachi-based Invest & Finance Securities Ltd. after obtaining regulatory approval, it said.

The bank is also pursuing a license in another frontier market and is “carefully studying the potential to make other opportunistic expansions across frontier markets” as part of its plans this year, it said.