A subsidiary of leading Russian investment company, Altimo has made a bid to acquire 100 percent of Egypt’s telecoms giant, Orascom Telecom, for $3.7 billion.

According to Reuters, the bid from a Cyprus-based company owned by Altimo was for all of Orascom Telecom’s 5.245 billion shares.

“The authority is currently studying the announced offer,” Reuters quoted the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority as saying.

Orascom Telecom is another big company that is planning to exit the Egyptian market this year after two others made public their intention to do so recently.

Egypt’s regulator accepted a Qatar National Bank (QNB)’s bid to buy Cairo’s National Societe General Bank (NSGB) in February this year.

Construction giant Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) is also completing a transaction with its Dutch-listed parent company, OCI NV. This deal may see the company de-list from the Egyptian bourse.

“It (the latest Altimo bid) will affect the index market capital which is already impacted by NSGB exiting and OCI, which might happen anytime now, so we are talking about more than 25 percent of the weight of the index,” Reuters quoted Ahmed Adel, a telecom analyst at Naeem Brokerage, as having said.

“The biggest players in the Egyptian market are OCI and Orascom Telecom and NSGB, and the idea is given the market conditions and the political situation … you cannot expect a high flow of new listings in the index right now.”