On 7 August 2013, a decree of the Prime Minister appointed Mr. Sherif Samy as Chairman of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA) for a term of four years.

During Mr. Samy’s seven months at the helm of the country’s non-banking financial services regulator, EFSA has either passed or recommended several changes to the current regulatory regime. These changes include:

• issuing new listing rules (in effect from 1 February), a separate newsletter on which will be sent to you by our firm shortly;
• approving the new executive regulations to the listing rules issued by the Egyptian Exchange, which is a new regulatory instrument providing more detailed executive provisions complementing the listing rules;
• issuing additional rules governing factoring companies, which include raising the required shareholding of financial institutions in factoring companies to 25% instead of 20%, increasing the capital requirements for factoring companies to at least EGP 10 million, and stricter requirements for the expertise of the board of directors of factoring companies;
• issuing new rules regulating Sharia oversight committees (for entities issuing Sharia compliant securities), including its formation and the expertise requirements for its members, and
• recommending to the Prime Minister several amendments to the Executive Regulations of the Capital Markets Law regarding funds and margin trading.

EFSA has also announced that it has prepared the first draft law in Egypt to regulate the activity of microfinance projects and prepared proposals to amend the mortgage finance law.

A brief Bio of Mr. Sherif Samy:

  source: http://www.egynews.net/

Taking over after Dr. Ashraf El Sharkawy, Mr. Samy is currently the Executive Chairman of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA), the country’s regulator of all non-banking financial services (capital market, insurance, private pension funds, leasing, mortgage and factoring).

He started his career with Accenture (the international consulting firm) working in three of its offices, namely in Chicago, Riyadh and Beirut.

Prior to joining EFSA, Mr. Samy was the managing director of Misr Capital, the investment arm of Banque Misr, managing a private equity portfolio of nearly $2 billion as well as two large mutual funds. He also served on the board of the General Authority for Investment (GAFI) for several terms and was a board member of Banque du Caire, the SME Development Fund in addition to numerous listed and privately held companies operating in the capital market, textile, urban development, engineering, education, logistics and mining sectors.

This publication is intended for general guidance only. It is not intended to render professional legal advice. No reader should rely on any information contained in this publication. In case you have any questions on issues reported here please send an email to Chadene El Tarouty ([email protected]) or Ahmed El Sharkawy ([email protected])