Lamia Tazi loses nearly $11 million in 2 months

Despite the resilient financial performance that her company Marocaine Ste de Therapeutique (Sothema) delivered at the end of its 2022 fiscal year, Moroccan pharmaceutical tycoon and multimillionaire businesswoman Lamia Tazi has suffered a substantial decline in her stake in the pharmaceutical company over the past two months.

According to data retrieved from the Casablanca bourse, the Moroccan multimillionaire business executive, who ranks as one of the richest businesswomen in the region, has seen the market value of her stake in Sothema decline by nearly $11 million.

Despite the resilient financial performance the group delivered in 2022 in the face of difficult operating environments, the recent decline in the market value of her stake was caused by the double-digit percent decline in Sothema shares on the local bourse.

Sothema is a leading healthcare company in Morocco, producing approximately 60 million pharmaceutical units annually and managing a diversified portfolio of 35 global laboratories that develop and market products to customers in Europe, the Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Persian Gulf.

Lamia Tazi, the CEO and chairperson of Sothema and one of the most affluent investors on the Casablanca Stock Exchange, holds a substantial 8.4-percent stake in the leading healthcare company, which corresponds to 605,030 issued shares.

Since March 3, the company’s share price has dropped by 12.55 percent, from MAD1,450 ($144.26) to MAD1,268 ($126.15) at the time of writing this report.

This has resulted in losses for the company’s shareholders, including Tazi, who owns a sizeable portion of the group.

As a result of the double-digit percent slump in Sothema’s shares in the past 60 days, the market value of Tazi’s stake in the group has declined by MAD110.11 million ($10.95 million) from MAD877.29 million ($87.28 million) on March 3 to MAD767.18 million ($76.32 million) at the time of writing this report.