Compagnie Generale Immobiliere: What Buyers Can Still Verify About Morocco's State-Owned Developer

If you are considering a property from Compagnie Générale Immobilière, the first thing worth knowing is that you cannot read its accounts the way you could a decade ago. CGI was taken off the Casablanca Stock Exchange in 2015. Since then it has published no periodic financial statements, and the only figures available to the public appear inside the annual reports of its parent company, which are themselves two years behind and inconsistent with each other.

That is not an accusation. State-controlled developers in many countries operate without listed-company disclosure. But it changes what due diligence on CGI can realistically achieve, and buyers should understand the limits before they rely on the company's size and state backing as a substitute for checking.

Who owns it

CGI is a subsidiary of CDG Développement, which is itself a subsidiary of Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion, Morocco's state deposit and investment institution. That chain is stated verbatim in CGI's own 2014 bond prospectus filed with the market regulator.

The current shareholding, per CDG Développement's 2023 activity report and CGI's own website, is CDG Développement 98.11 percent, CDG directly 1.78 percent, and other shareholders 0.11 percent. Combined state-institutional control is therefore 99.89 percent. The 92.6 percent figure still shown on the regulator's issuer page is a stale snapshot dated 31 December 2016.

The company is a société anonyme, constituted on 12 March 1960, registered at Rabat commercial register number 16836, with its registered office at the CDG building on Place Moulay El Hassan in Rabat and administrative headquarters at Espace Oudayas in Hay Riad. Share capital is 5,665,281,700 dirhams.

Leadership is one place where the public record has not kept up. Médias24, Le360, LesEco and La Nouvelle Tribune all reported on 23 April 2025 that Abderrahmane Ifrassen had been appointed director general of CGI and deputy director general of CDG Développement, having previously led Idmaj Sakan and Rabat Région Aménagements. CGI's own website still carries a message from Adil Chennouf as director general, and the regulator's issuer page still lists him as interim director general. The last documented board chair is Khalid Safir, named in the parent company's 2023 report. Anyone needing to know who signs for CGI today should ask for a current extract rather than trust either website.

The delisting

The boards of CDG Développement and CGI both met on 22 October 2014 and approved the delisting of CGI shares. CDG's own announcement states this followed a request from the Minister of Economy and Finance. Under Moroccan securities law that decision obliged the majority holder to make a public buyout offer first.

The regulator's handling of that offer is a matter of public record and is more interesting than the delisting itself. The CDVM, now the AMMC, rejected the first filing on 13 January 2015 and required independent valuations. Two regulator-approved valuers were appointed. Mazars Audit et Conseil valued the shares at 524.2 dirhams and Ernst & Young at 432 dirhams. The offer was nonetheless set at 725 dirhams, above both valuations, and declared admissible on 18 May 2015.

The offer covered 3,386,095 shares representing 18.4 percent of capital, ran from 15 June to 7 July 2015, and the prospectus timetable set radiation from the exchange for 30 September 2015. Le360 reported that more than 3,700 minority shareholders tendered, that over 98 percent of retail holders accepted, and that 30 September was the last trading day. CGI does not appear on the current roster of listed Casablanca companies.

Context worth stating plainly: CGI floated in 2007 at 925 dirhams, traded as high as roughly 2,400, and was bought out at 725. Le360 also reported that revenue fell 35 percent in 2014 and net profit dropped from 366 million dirhams to 76 million.

What the numbers show now

Since delisting, CGI's figures appear only inside CDG Développement's annual reports, and those reports do not reconcile. The 2022 report gives CGI revenue of 1,256 million dirhams for 2022 and a net loss of 271 million. The 2023 report gives revenue of 192 million for the same year 2022 and a net profit of 70 million. Neither report states whether it is presenting statutory or consolidated figures, so the two sets are not comparable and no single 2022 number should be treated as the figure.

For 2023 the parent reports revenue of 55 million dirhams, an operating loss of 49 million and a net loss of 67 million. On delivery, the 2023 report records 1,834 housing units handed over under the CGI perimeter, with commercial launches that year in Casablanca, Marrakech, Fnideq and El Jadida. No CDG Développement report for 2024 or 2025 has been published as of September 2026.

Morocco's Cour des comptes, the state audit institution, examined CDG in its 2018 annual report and named CGI and CDG Développement among the subsidiaries contributing negatively to group results. It recorded that CDG had begun a restructuring plan for CGI including full exit from the social housing sector. The 2023 parent report still lists continued restructuring and strategic repositioning of CGI as an objective, which suggests that work is not finished.

The Al Hoceima case

Any profile of CGI has to address the Madinat Badis affair, and it has to be precise about what was decided and against whom.

The dispute became public in August 2014 when buyers at the Madinat Badis development in Al Hoceima, a project announced in 2003 and still unfinished eleven years later, wrote to the royal palace. Médias24 reported in October 2014 that four separate investigations were then running, including by the judicial police and the Inspection Générale des Finances.

Médias24, Le360 and La Vie éco reported that on 4 February 2020 the financial crimes chamber at the Fès Court of Appeal sentenced Anass Houir Alami, former director general of CDG, and Mohamed Ali Ghannam, former director general of CGI, each to one year in prison and a 5,000 dirham fine, on charges reported as criminal association, forgery and misappropriation of public funds. Around 25 other defendants were acquitted. Both men appealed, which suspended execution. Médias24 reported that on 11 March 2022 the criminal chamber of the Fès Court of Appeal reduced both sentences to six months and upheld the acquittals of the other defendants.

Two qualifications matter. These were convictions of two individuals in their former capacities, not of CGI as a corporate defendant. And the acquittal of roughly two dozen co-defendants is part of the same record.

I found no AMMC sanction against CGI on either the pecuniary or disciplinary sanctions registers, and no independent reporting of buyer disputes against Compagnie Générale Immobilière after the Al Hoceima matter. Both statements describe what searching did not turn up, not what does not exist.

What a buyer should actually check

The company publishes no delivery dates on its project pages, names no construction contractors in any document I could locate, and issues no financial communications. So the checks that matter are documentary and local: the specific project company on the sale contract, the building permit and its date, the conformity certificate, and the title position at the land registry. Buyers can cross-reference announced against completed projects on Bektu, and CGI's record sits on its company page.

State ownership tells you who stands behind the company. It does not tell you when your unit will be finished. Those are separate questions, and only the second one is answered by paperwork you can ask to see.