Egypt's Pioneers to complete Rooya listing in H2 2016

Pioneers Holding, one of Egypt's largest financial services firms, expects to complete a 2 billion Egyptian pound ($255 million) initial share offering of property developer Rooya Group in the second half of this year.

"We will depend on foreign and Arab investors," Pioneers Chief Executive Walid Zaki told Reuters in an interview, adding requests from abroad had already started coming in.

Pioneers, which also invests in real estate, industry and financial services, acquired 60 percent of Rooya's shares in March 2015 for 1.2 billion pounds.

Rooya has a real estate portfolio of about 9 million square metres, with 6 million of that currently under development.

Zaki said Pioneers was looking into the acquisition of two other companies in the real estate and food sectors worth around 1 billion pounds combined.

The company posted a 97.5 percent jump in profit in the first nine months of 2015 to 400 million pounds. The total value of the company's acquisitions since 2011 will reach 4.5 billion Egyptian pounds in March, Zaki said.

Despite the strong results, Pioneers has not distributed cash dividends to its shareholders in recent years.

"We will discuss dividends with the shareholders after we complete the Rooya listing and the deals planned for this year," said Zaki.