EFG-Hermes opens its Seventh Annual One-on-One Conference

The event is set to help attract flows of foreign investment to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) by providing a forum for top international institutional investors to meet face-to-face with senior executives from the region's most interesting listed companies.

While many mature economies linger in recession, the latest International Monetary Fund projection for 2009 notes the MENA region's emerging markets will continue grow, albeit at a slower pace than before.

"No region is immune from the global economy's marked deterioration, but the overall outlook for the MENA region is among the world's most solid," said EFG-Hermes Securities Brokerage Managing Director Sherif Cararah. "The One-on-One Conference allows foreign investors access to the region's most senior corporate executives and government policy makers. It is an invaluable opportunity for institutional investors to deepen their ties to the region — and a perfect place for MENA companies to highlight why they deserve their share of foreign portfolio investment."

The four-day One-on-One event, hosted in Sharm El-Sheikh, features companies from a wide range of sectors, including banking, construction, building materials, real estate and telecommunications. More than 45 companies drawn from eight countries and collectively holding listings on 10 stock exchanges are participating.

This year's One-on-One has brought together around 250 investors from Europe, the United States and the MENA region. All of them have the opportunity to meet with c-suite executives from presenting companies in a relaxed, yet business-like environment, allowing both groups to hold numerous direct and open discussions in a concentrated period of time.

The 2009 EFG-Hermes One-on-One Conference will include keynote addresses from top government officials, including Gamal Mubarak (head of the Egyptian National Democratic Party's policies secretariat), Mahmoud Mohieldin (Egypt's Minister of Investment), Riad Salameh (Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon) and Amr Al-Dabbagh (Governor and Chairman of the Board of Directors of SAGIA from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).

"Our analysts regularly identify companies that will prove resistant to the turbulence caused in this region by global economic unrest," said Eiji Aono, EFG-Hermes' Head of Research. "The One-on-One Conference is the ideal forum for investors to meet these companies first-hand."

Commenting on the region's attractiveness to foreign institutional clients, Cararah noted, "The substantial build-up of net foreign reserves provides an economic safety net for the region's oil-producing states, allowing crucial investment programs to continue."

Cararah also credited the region's oil-producing states' quick and decisive tightening of global and regional liquidity, and praised economic reforms in the non-oil-producing states that have allowed those countries to withstand the economic headwinds.

"Institutional investors across the region are aware of how attractive the MENA region's fundamentals remain. Times may be tough, but interest in the conference remains very high exactly because the Arab world holds significant potential for investors looking to lock in growth in very challenging times," Cararah concluded.

EFG-Hermes Securities Brokerage serves more than 600 regional and global institutional investors and over 26,000 individual and high-net-worth clients from six offices in the MENA region.