Karim Helal, the former CEO of CI Capital, is known in the world of investment banking as a visionary for his key insights into the Egyptian market and his approach to banking and transactions.

After joining CI Capital in 2008, Helal launched the company’s first small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) fund in Egypt as well as the Look East Initiative that builds entrepreneurial ties between Egypt and the Far East.

“I always believed in SMEs — my whole approach was really to engrain the culture of integrity all the way in [its] relationship to banking,” he says.

One project that Helal is excited about, and understandably so, is the ASEAN Egyptian Business Association, a newly established NGO that Helal is chairing which develops relations between Egypt and ASEAN countries. (It is also one of the first business associations to be established after the January 25 Revolution.)

The organization will help bridge gaps on issues like trade and investment laws and create cultural exchanges, which will in turn foster business opportunities, explains Helal.

“It is time that Egypt developed a really strong relationship with these nations of the world. It is a market which has 700 million consumers and has developed expertise and skills in so many areas that we need, it doesn’t make sense that we are lagging so much behind,” he says.
Helal was also recently appointed the Saudi Egyptian Business Counsellor, a position he hopes will foster economic investment relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, one of Egypt’s most important regional trading partners.

Journey to success
Helal’s path has always been tied to banking. In 1971, he graduated from Cairo University’s Business School and began his career with the Arab International Bank. After a few months, he moved to the Arab African Bank and helped establish the first international finance department in Egypt. The youngest manager at that time, Helal’s dedication made him a prime candidate to open a branch in Bahrain in 1978, where he stayed for four years.

 
“I went straight into banking — it’s like I always knew what I wanted to do,” he says. Later on, he managed another bank based in Bahrain that had branches in Hong Kong, Malaysia and London, where he eventually lived for 10 years. He set up a boutique investment bank there in 1982.

When Helal came back to Egypt in the early 1990s, his took a break from banking and learned how to scuba dive. But his business drive couldn’t be dampened, leading him to turn his scuba hobby into a small business that helped establish scuba diving schools and diving centers across Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada. He was integral in introducing professional diving techniques to local instructors and formalizing the business of diving in the two cities. He also founded the first NGO for diving and water sports and was the first chairman of the Touristic Chamber of Diving and Water Sports.

Helal says his goal was promoting Egypt as a dive destination internationally, as well as convincing people that diving has the potential to be a multi-million pound business here. In addition, Helal wanted to create job opportunities for Egyptians in a sector usually dominated by Europeans due to the expense of training and an unfair social stigma attached to Egyptian diving instructors.

Both reasons led him to launch a sponsored program in Hurghada to train 20 young Egyptians as diving instructors for free.

“They graduated as instructors and the only thing I asked from them was to train 10 Egyptians to create a pyramid. They have all been working. Some have their own diving centers or became managers, and it just changed their life. If you give somebody a chance to change their life, their whole life is turned around,” he says.

Support system and productivity
Helal’s commitment to helping Egyptians secure jobs is what Egypt must do on a wider scale — the nation needs to create job opportunities and enhance the country’s productivity if it wants to grow and develop in the future.

When it comes to understanding the upcoming sectors in Egypt, the businessman says the country must look at the drivers of the revolution.
“It was economic grievances. If you really look at the masses that came out it really was on the back of economic hardships. They came out because they had enough of unemployment, of having a degree and not finding a job. They had enough of inflation, of inequality in opportunities and of poverty,” he says.

These are the reasons Helal thinks Egypt must shift its focus to sustained economic development and work hard to increase productivity. To him, the biggest challenge is to create productive jobs for youth. One way to address this issue is to invest in SMEs as well as embark on government-sponsored mega-projects since they often create a lot of work and investment opportunities. In addition, he also thinks the government should invest in sectors already strong in intellectual capital, such as information technology.

“We have brilliant people working there. We need the support system that will allow them to dream and become another Facebook,” he says.
Helal also thinks an important sector that could boom if it gets the proper recognition and investment is low- and medium-income housing.

“It is a basic right for every person to own his own house, his own home,” he says, adding that people who think that the real estate sector is finished are wrong. However, Helal notes making this a reality will be no easy task because specific financial infrastructure needs to be in place to allow young people to buy property and get long-term mortgages.

Helal also adds Egypt should put more emphasis on renewable energy and more efficient agriculture practices to help solve one of its most pressing issues: inflationary pressure on imported food.

“We practically import everything we eat. [Imports] are completely subject to the market. There is nothing you can do, so when prices [jump] we suffer very badly and there is nothing we can do about it,” he says, adding that the solution is to be more self sufficient in agriculture.

Investment hub
Despite the numerous problems the country must fix, Helal affirms that Egypt still has tremendous investment potential. Before the January 25 Revolution, Egypt had clear economic drivers and boasted several advantages because of its geographic location, coupled with attractive trade agreements with neighboring countries.

Egypt has the second largest population in Africa, half of which is the youth that will help the nation grow thanks to sustainable consumption, rising consumerism and higher productivity and demand.

“Investors are looking for sustainable growth,” he says. Helal says the country’s economic  drivers are still present after the revolution and will only look better to investors with the added prospects of a more transparent government that is committed to stamping out corruption, in addition to its already strong banking sector and diverse economy.

“The medium and long-term outlook is extremely positive and much better than before, because you are obviously maintaining the key drivers and you are adding two more positives,” he says. But it may take time to get Egypt on the right track, as is clear from looking at the nation’s tumultuous political scene right now. “I think what is happening now is quite normal. After such tremendous events things do not come back to normal immediately, they take years and decades, which is nothing in the historic revolution of a nation. We have to think in those terms,” he says.

When asked what policies he would like the government to adopt in the future, Helal doesn’t mince his words. In his opinion, the private sector needs to be given support so it can do what it’s designed to: lead Egypt’s growth and provide jobs. The private sector has been providing the bulk of employment opportunities to Egyptians over the last 10–20 years, and if Egypt wants the sector to continue to do this, officials must help it grow.

“All these massive projects around you [are from] the private sector. The government is not in a position, nor should it [be forced to provide] everything — we cannot be a welfare state.”

Helal insists the answers are providing a business-friendly environment and the legal framework to allow the private sector to take charge and flourish.

“What is wrong with making zillions [of pounds] as long as the private sector is being transparent, being honest and is creating all these productive jobs that we need so badly and is increasing the productivity of the country?” he asks.

Getting Egypt ready for business and promoting it as an investment hub must be major priorities for the government, because the way Helal sees it, if the private sector doesn’t start to invest money, nobody else will.

“[If] people think that foreign investors or Arab investors will invest in a country where its own people are afraid to invest in, it is delusional.” Egypt can start by using its position in the region as a gateway to the West, Middle East and Africa.

“The road to the new Egypt is long, and bumpy. I am not worried about that because that is the natural course of history. When you change the very deep core of the country like what is happening now, it will take decades. But what is really important is to start,” he says. But first Egypt must define its political identity as a civil democratic country as well as outline a clear economic strategy, which has to be based on an open market. “[Y]ou cannot have a successful free market without social justice, we have seen that already everywhere — the only way to do that is to increase productivity and create productive jobs.” bt