Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Citadel Capital SAE, an Egyptian private-equity firm, headed for the lowest close in more than a week after its first-half loss more than doubled because of economic and political unrest.

The shares of the Cairo-based company lost 2.4 percent to 3.29 Egyptian pounds at 1:52 p.m. in Cairo, heading for the lowest close since Oct. 13. That gave the company a market value of 2.69 billion pounds ($451 million). The benchmark EGX 30 Index advanced 0.9 percent.

The net consolidated loss for the period that ended June 30 widened to 291.8 million Egyptian pounds ($49 million) from 128.7 million pounds a year-earlier, Citadel said in a statement on its website yesterday. It said it had a 180.5 million loss in the second-quarter, without providing a comparative figure for the same period last year.

Revenue at Asec Holding, the Citadel unit with cement and engineering arms, was set back by labor strikes and a weak backlog of projects because of the uprising that toppled Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in February. Citadel didn’t sell any of its investments during the period, the company said.

--Editors: James Kraus, Claudia Maedler

To contact the reporter on this story: Ahmed A Namatalla in Cairo at anamatalla@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Maedler at cmaedler@bloomberg.net