Example research essay topic: Ays Medium Sized - 750 words

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PRIVATE SECTOR: Ready for action As Egypt is known for it's mixed economic system, Compared with other emerging markets, Egypt's private sector is tiny. The public sector still accounts for almost 70 per cent of GDP despite the fact that hundreds of public enterprises have been wholly or partly privatised during the past four years. Judging, however, by the rapid growth of some of the country's largest family-owned businesses, this is unlikely to hold true five years from now. Roof Ghabbour, chairman of Ghabbour Group, a family business and the country's largest assembler and distributor of motor vehicles, says there are hundreds of medium-sized companies which are growing fast enough to qualify for joint-stock status within three or four years. Ghabbour Group is one of only a dozen or so unlisted private sector companies with a turnover of more than E 1 bn. This is considered a minimum threshold for a company to launch a successful public listing. 'Our turnover has been growing at about 25 per cent a year this decade, 's ays Mr Ghabbour. 'There are countless small and medium-sized companies with this kind of growth rate. ' Much like Orascom, Egypt's largest family-owned group, which has interests ranging from tourism to telecoms separated into several publicly listed companies, Ghabbour has been converted to the benefits of going public.

The car assembler, which also has a growing consumer loan subsidiary, hopes to offer 10 to 15 per cent of its equity in an initial public offering later this year. Others, including IGI, a diversified family-owned group with interests in manufacturing, dairy farming and petroleum, are thinking along similar lines. 'There are probably about 10 or 12 family companies with similar plans, 's ays Khaled Sheta, chief executive of International Group for Investment. 'All of them will be quoted in a year or two from now. ' Mr Sheta provides justification for such a move. 'Opening your books to the public acts as a good business discipline on managers and enables you to value your assets more accurately, ' he says. It is also, of course, a handy way of raising capital without having to cede majority control of the company. Indeed, for the few that have achieved genuine nation-wide market share in their industries, there is little choice but to go public or offer stakes to strategic investors if they want to continue expanding. Being so small in number, companies such as Ghabbour and Mansour, which has the Coca-Cola and McDonald's franchise in Egypt, are inevitably bumping up against credit limits to their banks. 'There is too much concentrated lending in the Egyptian banking sector because there are so few eligible companies to lend to, 's ays a foreign banker. 'This is forcing the larger companies to look elsewhere for capital. ' And, with privatisation slowing in the past 12 months, the Egyptian Stock Exchange and the country's growing investor base are hungry for new listings. Such offerings do not grow on trees, however.

A handful of publicly listed stocks accounts for a large share of the market's turnover despite the fact more than 800 companies are listed. Furthermore, many privately held companies are faring less well than the Mansours and the Ghabbour's. Dr Need Shaarawi, chairman of Glaxo Wellcome in Egypt, says Egypt's pharmaceutical sector faces big hurdles in achieving competitiveness ahead of Egypt's Uruguay Round commitment to introduce intellectual property laws in 2004. Egypt's pharmaceutical sector is protected by extensive price controls and the absence of patent laws. This enables them to copy foreign drugs and sell them in bulk to the Egyptian market. Within five years this will have disappeared. 'It takes on average 15 years and a lot of capital to develop a successful drug, 's ays Mr Shaarawi. 'Egypt's pharmaceutical companies should be developing alliances with foreign partners and with domestic research institutes, but there is little sign of this happening. ' The same applies to the textile sector, which has long relied on cheap labour and plentiful supplies of cotton to remain viable.

Western countries are committed under the Uruguay Round to scrap quotas on textile imports from developing countries. But Egypt is also committed to reduce tariff protection for the domestic garment sector. However, few Egyptian companies are likely to launch IPOs in the near future. With a price-earnings ratio of about eight or nine, the market's valuation remains too low to be seriously tempting. For now, investors will have to be content with the few liquid stocks already on offer.

Research essay sample on Ays Medium Sized