Finance Unlimited

Finance Unlimited is Citadel Capital’s fully owned Platform Company for financial services. The company currently holds majority stakes in three key investments and plans to broaden its interests across the full spectrum of financial services in frontier markets in the Middle East and Africa.

Finance Unlimited’s current holdings are: Tanmeyah Micro Enterprise Services, (a greenfield microcredit lender), Pharos Financial Holdings (a leading Cairo-based integrated investment banking firm) and Sudanese Egyptian Bank (an Islamic commercial bank in Sudan with a primary focus on financing trade between Egypt and Sudan). Finance Unlimited also owns a small cap private equity management company, Sphinx Egypt, through Pharos Financial Holdings.

Tanmeyah Micro Enterprise Services is 51% owned by Finance Unlimited in partnership with an Egyptian commercial bank and its expert management team. With a paid-in capital of EGP 35 million, Tanmeyah is one of the fastest growing micro lenders in Egypt with roughly 65,000 customers, 92 branches nationwide and a loan portfolio in excess of EGP 170 million.

Pharos Financial Holding is 53% owned by Finance Unlimited in partnership with its management team and international investors. The firm has operations in brokerage, investment banking and asset management and a paid-in capital of EGP 223 million. Pharos has been consistently rated as a top-10 brokerage firm in Egypt and has most recently climbed up to fourth place in the Egyptian Exchange (EGX) rankings. With EGP 1 billion in assets under management and a major investment banking deal in the pipeline, Pharos is also actively pursuing regional expansion at a MENA level.

The Sudanese Egyptian Bank is a northern Sudanese Islamic commercial bank with an estimated net worth of US$ 30 million. The bank holds a loan portfolio of SDG 130 million, deposits of SDG 350 million and has a capital adequacy ratio in excess of 40%. By successfully leveraging local corporate relations primarily in trade transactions between Egypt and Sudan, the bank has shown promising signs of success in retail banking and has now grown its network to eight branches across the country.

Finance Unlimited is constantly seeking new growth opportunities with both expansions and greenfields in sectors where the company has proven expertise. The company is also broadening its financial services footprint in areas such as insurance, consumer finance and commercial banking.

OPERATIONAL UPDATE

Tanmeyah Micro Enterprise Services has expanded its branch network to 92 as of year-end 2010, up from 48 branches at the end of 2009 and grown its loan portfolio to approximately EGP 150 million servicing 64,843 clients, more than double the client base from a year earlier. In October 2010 Tanmeyah announced expansion into the very-small-enterprise credit market, which targets loan sizes in the EGP 40,000 to EGP 100,000 range versus the average micro-enterprise loan range of EGP 1,000 to EGP 30,000.

In 2010, Pharos’ brokerage market share reached 6.2%, ranking it among the top three brokerages in Egypt. Assets under management more than doubled from EGP 470 million in 2009 to EGP 1 billion in 2010. The company’s stellar performance resulted in a net income of EGP 15.79 million.
Despite a difficult political climate, Sudanese Egyptian Bank recorded record earnings of USD 5.1 million.