Egypt's Beltone Financial aims to increase the value of its assets under management by 45 per cent within a year, the company's chairman said on Sunday.      

Egyptian investment banks were hit hard when foreign investors pulled out of the country and trade on the stock exchange slumped after last year's uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.      

Beltone swung to a loss of 106.6 million Egyptian pounds ($17.63 million) last year from a profit of 2.1 million pounds in 2010.      

"Currently we have assets with a value of 22 billion Egyptian pounds and we seek to increase it to 32 billion pounds within one year from now," Aladdin Saba told Reuters in an interview.      

"We aim to expand externally in different countries and we have a wide range of ideas that we seek to execute in 2013," he said, without detailing those ideas or the countries he was targeting.     

He said he expected Beltone to return to profit this year.     

Egyptian investment firm Arabiyya Lel Estithmaraat (AIC) said in February it had sold its 9.56 per cent stake in Beltone in a deal worth 11.1 million pounds. – Reuters