Egyptian Company for Mobile Services (ECMS), which runs Egypt’s largest mobile phone operator Mobinil, plans to raise £E1.5bn ($270m) through a corporate bond by the end of January.

The company, which is jointly owned by France Telecom and Egypt-based Orascom Telecom, declined to say why it wanted to raise the money.

ECMS plans to raise £E1.4bn through a private placement and the remaining £E100m from retail investors.

The bond is the largest corporate deal in Egypt in 2009, according to EFG-Hermes, the Egyptian investment bank which is underwriting the five-year debt issue.

On 16 December, Orascom Telecom appealed against a decision by Egypt’s capital markets regulator, the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority, to allow France Telecom to buy all of the equity in ECMS that it does not already own at a price of £E245 a share.

Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Telecom, said at the time that France Telecom would only take over ECMS over “my dead body”.