Egyptian Exchange

But a government source tells us that a European roadshow last month brought international investors in for a large part of the private placement, and local institutions are being encouraged to raise their equity exposure too.

Counting M&T, this would be the fourth IPO to make it to the EGX this year, with Banque du Caire being the first state enterprise on that list, and hopefully not the last.

The government is currently weighing the idea of a new home for property it isn't using.

Idle land and real estate could now be routed to Mistakbo Misur.

At the same time, ICE have also launched VLCC tanker and container freight contracts as customers hedge freight risk across the many and often volatile global trade routes.

Egypt Stock Exchange has approved a new mechanism on government debt trading and the Singapore Exchange and the Vietnam Exchange are working towards mutual issuance of depository receipts.

In technology, big news in Warsaw.

The GPW Watts trading system, developed at home in Poland, is now working, having been first put into code under the previous management.

Depending on how you squint, it's a lender, a fintech, a distribution network, or something that looks a lot like a bank, but without the deposits, at least for now.

Mounir built this in seventeen years, and today he's taking the Egyptian part of this business public on the EGX.

CIB, Egypt's largest private sector bank, said earlier this week that it was gonna take a two billion Egyptian pound cornerstone position in that IPO.

MNT is putting twenty percent of its Egypt unit up for grabs, and the IPO should close later this month.

Maybe that would have been justifiable in early twenty twenty-four or in twenty twenty-three.

Yeah, when you have a big FX overhang and a parallel market and rampant inflation, sure.

But there's no reason whatsoever to have this now, and- Different universe today ... and listing on the EGX is a testament of the value of the Egyptian mar-- business because then it's totally transferrable, it's tradable.

Yeah, otherwise you would have gone to ADX, expatriated the business, and done a listing there.

The order books open at M&T Halland's Egypt Arm, with every share going for a fixed 24.5 pounds under the prospectus the regulator approved.

By our math, that makes the company worth about 39 billion pounds, and selling a fifth of it makes this the EGX's biggest IPO in dollar terms since eFinance.

Two anchors are already in.

Yesterday, we told you about CIB committing up to £2 billion.

Remember the footsie Russell downgrade watch we've been covering? It's over now, and Egypt remains a secondary emerging market in their books.

The index put us on its watch list for downgrades a bit over a year ago, when only one Egyptian stock was left in its emerging markets index, short of the minimum of two.

Footsie Russell says that government reforms and the EGX's own push to boost trading is what changed their verdict.

And that's what led to a second Egyptian stock qualifying in both the March and September reviews of this year.

If you want a feel for the price, look at value.

It's the nearest thing to M&T on the EGX, and its shares go for about twenty-eight times what it earns.

M&T is way bigger, though, with double the active customers as value.

That, and it also serves people with less money.

Samer Haghareb, who's a capital markets expert at Tycoon, says if M&T gets priced above its listed peers and the book still fills, then those peers are undervalued and will likely reprice.

Now to the question hanging over the deal.

We know that foreigners sold about two billion pounds more than they bought last quarter and that their share of trading on the EGX has shrunk every quarter this year down to six percent.

This means that during that time, local investors have been carrying the market almost on their own.

Yeah, look, the Optasia listing was very successful, and I think given the oversubscribed success of that IPO, there will be a lot more companies that see Johannesburg as a, as a potential listing destination.

Um, you know, we're, we're also interested in local markets like the Egypt Stock Exchange.

There have been some successful exits there.

But a lot of the names that we're seeing recently, Opay is looking at listing in the US.

Morning Drive is brought to you by Medinet Masr, Granit Financial Holding and Bunyan for real estate investments.

Hedge funds finally get a license to play the EGX and CI Capital wants the first one.

And the new Sukhna truck yard only lets trucks in for cargo already cleared by Nefida.

Plus, British police grab five men over a suspected plot at the base America bombs Iran from.

The FRA then reads those limits and signs off on them, one fund at a time.

And that freedom even covers borrowing, since the new rules switch off the statutory ceiling every regular fund lives under, and that makes hedge funds the only fund type in the market without a cap set for them by law.

What is fixed is where the money can go, and that's EGX-listed securities, listed fund units, and exchange-traded futures and options.

That means there are no offshore positions, no unlisted units, and no bespoke derivatives anywhere in the mix.

I'm your host, Chipo Muwowo.

My guest today is Ahmed Sobhy, Deputy CEO at E-Finance Investment Group, a leading Egyptian fintech and digital infrastructure company listed on the Egyptian Exchange.

Ahmed, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Chipo.

So by transferring the branches to NBE, we're attempting to reset compliance and keep BankMisra's footprint in the UAE alive.

Okay, one more update from the EGX before we go to break.

Mr.

Life Insurance has approved a 10-for-1 stock split and lifted its share count from $500 million to $5 billion.