LONDON – Egypt’s turmoil is having limited impact on global financial markets, where investors see few parallels with Iran’s 1979 revolution.

World equity-market capitalization climbed to $53.6 trillion this week, the highest level since June 2008, even as protests against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule intensified and forced the nation’s bourse and banks to close for a fifth day.

Dubai’s equity index rose the most in nine months Wednesday and emerging-market bonds rallied, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Traxis Partners’s Barton Biggs says it’s a mistake to sell shares because of Egypt’s crisis, while Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Mohamed El-Erian sees signs of a “reconciliation” in the most-populous Arab country.

“The one thing to avoid is to exaggerate the probability for chaos,” El-Erian, the son of an Egypt diplomat and chief executive officer at Pimco, which oversees about $1.2 trillion worldwide, said in a Feb. 1 interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene. “There’s a lot of talk of ‘What if Egypt becomes Iran?’ I don’t think that’s the case.”

While the markets in Cairo closed after the benchmark EGX 30 Index tumbled 16 percent last week, overseas investors have been betting on a rally in Egyptian assets. The Market Vectors Egypt Index ETF, an exchange-traded fund that holds Egyptian shares, has climbed 10 percent since Jan. 28, and the fund is trading at an 11 percent premium to its net asset value, the second-biggest of about 1,400 U.S. ETFs tracked by Bloomberg.

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London-traded global depositary receipts of Orascom Telecom Holding, the biggest mobile-phone operator in the Middle East by users, have gained 5.8 percent from an almost two-year low on Jan. 31.

Naguib Sawiris, the company’s billionaire chief executive officer, called for a nullification of the country’s parliament in an interview on Bloomberg Television Thursday, stopping short of seeking Mubarak’s immediate exit.

Egyptian lenders will open their doors Sunday and the stock exchange may start trading the next day, according to the Middle East News agency.

“I’m not selling, and I’m not panicked by these events in Egypt and the Middle East,” Biggs, who runs New York-based hedge fund Traxis Partners, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “The ongoing economic data is very encouraging.”

While protests in Tunisia led to the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14 and Jordan’s King Abdullah replaced his prime minister after anti-government demonstrations, oil-rich Middle Eastern countries have been largely insulated from the turmoil.

“People are still assuming a velvet transition and do not expect this to end in a harsh outcome,” Timothy Ash, head of emerging-market research at Royal Bank of Scotland Group in London, said in an e-mailed response to questions. “The consensus is that Gulf states should be OK as they have the cash to spread around and avoid some of the poverty issues which have underpinned the demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt.”

“This is unlikely to spread to oil-exporting countries,” Mark Diab, a money manager at GLG Partners who runs the Ocean MENA Opportunities fund and Ocean GCC Opportunities fund, said in an interview from Doha.


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