CAIRO, Feb 9 (Aswat Masriya) - The Egyptian stock market plunged across all indices on Tuesday with the benchmark index EGX 30 bearing the largest retreat, affected by both domestic and regional factors.  

EGX 30 fell by 2.76 per cent reaching 6,004 points, down from 6,175 at the beginning of the session.

Several blue-chip stocks dropped today, including the Commercial International Bank's (CIB) which retreated by 4.6 per cent and EFG Hermes Holdings' stock which fell by 4.81 per cent.

Mohamed Naggar, the head of technical analysis in Marwa for brokerage and stock exchange told Aswat Masriya the market was brought down in part by the news of the National Bank of Egypt's withdrawal from the acquisition deal of investment bank CI Capital.

The National Bank of Egypt is the country's biggest state-owned bank, while CI Capital is owned by the private sector bank CIB, which describes CI Capital as its "investment bank arm".

The National Bank of Egypt quit the deal on Monday in favour of Orascom Telecom, Media and Technology's (OTMT), whose executive chairman is telecom magnate Naguib Sawiris. The withdrawal came over a disagreement on the period of time in which CI Capital was to be legally and financially inspected.

While CI Capital insisted that the inspection takes place in two weeks, the National Bank of Egypt wanted 45 days to run the inspection.

Naggar says the withdrawal means that the deal will not be carried out at the highest price, as had been expected.  

But another factor that led to today's dip, according to Naggar, is the retreats across Gulf markets. Saudi's TASI index fell 0.54 percent, while Kuwait's weighted index fell by 1.99 per cent.  

Naggar expects Egypt's market to continue dropping in the upcoming period. He added that "so long as there is no positive news to support market, it will continue to drop affected by global markets."  

Both the index for small and medium enterprises EGX 70 and the broader EGX 100 index have made fluctuations throughout today's trading session. At closing, EGX 70 fell by 1 per cent and EGX 100 by 1.08 per cent.    

Egypt's stock exchange has been hit hard by the instability created by the dramatic fall of oil prices of the past year and a half, with the global market being flooded with supply.

EGX 30 has fallen by over 14.2 per cent since the start of the year.