Lord Stone of Blackheath, a former chairman of Marks and Spencer, will serve as chairman for a $100 million investment fund that will invest in the Egyptian qualified industrial zones (QIZs).
Israeli, Egyptian, British and US businesspeople are partners in the new fund. The US, Israel and Egypt will sign the QIZ agreement in Cairo today, in the presence of Egypt's minister of foreign trade and industry.
Adv. Gideon Fisher represents the Israeli investors in the fund, including New Jerusalem Fund general manager Zvi Raviv and former Carmel Mortgage Bank CEO Israel Erlich. Other investors wish to remain anonymous.
The Egyptian investors in the fund are Dr. Ibrahim Kamal, the CEO of a large holding company, and considered a confident of President Hosni Mubarak; and Lazard Asset Management Egypt managing director Dina Khayat, the niece of former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali.
Fisher said the fund planned to raise $100 million from private and public bodies in the US, Europe, Israel and Egypt to invest in ventures to be founded in the QIZs. Under the QIZ terms, manufacturing will be by joint Israeli-Egyptian ventures, and all production will be exported to the US under special customs terms.
Lord Stone and the fund's partners hope that it will promote normalization between Israel and Egypt.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on December 14, 2004