Friday, July 25, 2014

A Pharaonic Collection of Egyptian Scripophily

The Egypt Stock Exchange
In 1883, the Alexandria Stock Exchange, located at the Mohammed Ali Square, was officially established mainly for handling transactions in cotton. Until the 1950's most trading will be done with the Liverpool Cotton Exchange. Around the 1900's agricultural and real estate projects were in development all over Egypt triggering the corresponding infrastructure projects and vice versa. In 1903 the old premises of the Ottoman Bank on Maghraby Street were chosen for the temporarily headquarters of the Bourse and Banking Company of Egypt Ltd, also known as the Bourse Khediviale du Caire, the Cairo Stock Exchange.

With a booming economy, both exchanges rated quickly among the world's top five stock exchanges with over 200 companies traded on the Cairo Bourse alone. In 1996 the Cairo and Alexandria stock exchanges where unified into the Egypt Stock Exchange. Both have the same board of directors and share the same trading, clearing and settlement systems.
Source: History of the Egyptian Stock Exchange, see here .

Egyptian Guaranteed 3% Loan 1887 showing sfinx and crescent moon
Egyptian Guaranteed 3% Loan 1887
Bond of 1000 Pounds, specimen
double-click to enlarge image
source: www.scripocollections.com

A grandiose scripophily collection from Egypt
In April 2013 a collection of Egyptian securities was auctioned by the auctioneer Boone. Brought together by the seller over a time span of tens of years, the collection includes almost 1000 shares and bonds from almost 500 companies representing all major industries : from land development, sugar and textile industry, by railroads, shipping and canal building to metallurgical industry, consumer products, telecommunication and tourism. The collection also includes a wide variety of Egyptian government bonds. Spanning two centuries, the certificates also illustrate changes of cultural influences and economic power : for example, many securities have bilingual text, English-Arabic or French-Arabic, while others are only in English, French or Arabic.

Import and Production of Pharmaceuticals SAE Co.
10 Shares of 10 Egyptian Pounds, 1974
-
underprint of laboratory flasks surrounding the “Bowl of Hygeia”,
the pharmacist's symbol (a bowl with the serpent of wisdom)
double-click to enlarge image
source: www.scripocollections.com 

The collection was not sold in the auction and is still available. The entire collection is on view on the auctioneer's ScripoCollections.Com site.

F.L.

No comments:

Post a Comment