Grace Ashiru
Egypt’s bourse has granted a temporary listing to MNT Tech Holding for Financial Investments, the parent of fintech unicorn MNT-Halan, clearing the main regulatory hurdle before a Cairo debut. The EGX listing committee signed off at its 14 September meeting, covering issued capital of EGP160 million (about $3 million) split into 1.6 billion shares at a par value of EGP0.10, and the shares entered the exchange database under the Non-banking Financial Services sector on 15 September under the ticker HALN.CA.
Nobody can buy them yet. The committee attached a six-month clock: MNT Tech must complete the offering and satisfy every condition for final listing, or the temporary listing is treated as though it never happened. Trading is frozen in the interim without approval from the Financial Regulatory Authority, and the company must also finish FRA registration and formally apply to the EGX to execute the offering inside that window. The FRA can extend the deadline if the company submits justifications and a timetable it accepts. In practice, that gives MNT-Halan until mid-March 2027.
The valuation question is the interesting one. In June, MNT-Halan’s valuation was marked at $1.4 billion after an investment led by Al Ahly Capital, the private equity arm of the National Bank of Egypt, the first time a commercial bank took equity in a company that had previously dealt with more than 30 Egyptian banks and financing institutions purely as a borrower. But the listing covers the Egyptian unit only, which Bloomberg reported in June was being pitched at $900 million to $1 billion with Citigroup and EFG Hermes advising, leaving the Turkish, Emirati and Pakistani businesses outside the listed entity. Public investors are being asked to pay less for a smaller, cleaner asset.
MNT-Halan started in 2018 as a ride-hailing app for two- and three-wheelers and turned into Egypt’s largest non-bank lender to unbanked and underbanked customers, disbursing more than $15.5 billion in loans and serving over 8 million people, after hitting unicorn status in 2023 on a $400 million equity and debt round at a $1 billion valuation.
Cairo needs this to work. The main Egyptian index is up more than 23% this year, yet foreign money has stayed away, and bankers are treating MNT-Halan as the offering that brings it back, which is why Mounir Nakhla has spent recent months meeting investors across the Gulf, London and the United States. Buy-now-pay-later platform Valu listed in 2025 and jumped on day one. For founders in Lagos and Nairobi watching for a credible exit route, the structure matters as much as the price: ring-fence the regulated local business with the strongest revenue, keep the riskier cross-border operations private, and list at home
