Orascom Telecom and textiles help lift Cairo's stock market

Orascom Telecom (OT) helped lift Egypt's bourse on Sunday as shares in the firm surged to a near four-week closing high ahead of this week's results that investors expect to be strong, dealers said.
The benchmark Hermes index ended up 949.97 points, or 2.3 percent, at 42,770.77 points, its highest closing level in almost six weeks. The broader CIBC index climbed 1.62 points, or 1.1 percent, to close at 152.15.
"I think the slide (in the market) is over. It's the end of August, people are coming back from holiday," said Hashem Ghoneim of El Nour Securities.
Shares in OT, which reports its first half figures after the close of trading on Monday, last traded up 26.62 Egyptian pounds ($4.61), or 5 percent, at 560.01 pounds.
Textiles gave the market a further boost with interest in the sector aroused by Modern Nile for Cotton Co's recent bid for El Nasr Clothes and Textile Co (Kabo), dealers said.
Among the day's top percentage gainers, shares in Arab Cotton Ginning closed 0.64 pounds higher at 9.48 pounds, a rise of 7.2 percent on the day.
Shares in Arab Polavara, another textile firm, jumped 0.51 pounds, or 7.7 percent, to close at 7.18 pounds.
interbank rate rises
The median overnight interbank rate on Egypt's pound rose to 9.7 percent on Sunday from Thursday's 9.635 percent, as banks neared the end of the period for calculating bank reserves, traders said.
This two-week period for calculating bank reserves will end on Monday and traders tend to square early.
The central bank announced an auction of seven-day CBE notes worth 1.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($260 million). An auction of 91-day T-bills worth 1 billion pounds was also announced but the results will not be issued until Monday.
The auctions absorb liquidity from the market and have been more popular with traders recently as they are offering better yields than the interbank market.
Three out of the nine banks contacted by Reuters traded overnight money at rates between 9.6 and 9.75 percent, compared to a range of 9.6 to 9.85 percent on Thursday.