Judging, however, by the rapid growth of some of the country's largest family-owned businesses, this is unlikely to hold true five years from now. Raouf Ghabbour, chairman of Ghabbour Group, a family business and the country's largest assembler and distributor of motor vehicles, says there are hundreds of medium-sized companies which are growing fast enough to qualify for joint-stock status within three or four years.

Ghabbour Group is one of only a dozen or so unlisted private sector companies with a turnover of more than E£1bn. This is considered a minimum threshold for a company to launch a successful public listing. "Our turnover has been growing at about 25 per cent a year this decade," says Mr Ghabbou

And, with privatisation slowing in the past 12 months, the Egyptian Stock Exchange and the country's growing investor base are hungry for new listings.

"It takes on average 15 years and a lot of capital to develop a successful drug," says Mr Shaarawi. "Egypt's pharmaceutical companies should be developing alliances with foreign partners and with domestic research institutes, but there is little sign of this happening."

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