CAIRO, Feb. 16 (Aswat Masriya) - Egypt's benchmark stock index EGX 30 rose by 0.9 per cent in the first minutes of transactions on Tuesday.

EGX 70, the index for small and medium enterprises, also rose by 0.7 per cent, while the broader EGX 100 increased by 0.18 per cent.

The EGX 30 made a slight increase of 0.8 per cent on Monday, after Egypt's largest listed lender Commercial International Bank said it accepted an offer by Orascom Telecom to buy the bank’s investment arm CI Capital for EGP 924 million ($118.01 million).

Orascom is owned by Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, who made an initial offer to buy CI Capital on Dec. 17. This will be the second acquisition by the Egyptian billionaire of a large financial institution after he recently bought Beltone Financial for EGP 650 million.

Sawiris is one of the country’s most prominent businessmen and the founder of the Free Egyptians Party, a political party which is represented in the House of Representatives by 65 seats out of a total of 596 seats.