Enterprise loves all industries, but we’re finance nerds at heart, if only because money is the lens through which we judge prospects and problems alike. Whether you’re evaluating a potential new venture or trying to solve an issue, you ask: How much will it cost? Where’s the money coming from? How much does the money itself cost? Does the return on the investment make sense? Is this the best use of our money?

Questions about finance are fundamental to business and the answers decide who we hire, what markets we expand into, and the products we create. Money helps determine how we're regulated — and how we're taxed. It makes the world go round.

We identified seven themes while preparing our first Enterprise Finance Forum — themes that set the tone for us all every workday and every quarter of 2023. Most of those themes look set to persist well into 2024. It’s simple really, we’ve never gathered as a community at a time that is so simultaneously challenging and replete with avenues through which to grow our businesses.

We had nearly three dozen brand-name CEOs and C-suite execs on stage over two days. These are the themes that they discussed, as framed by Patrick, our editor-in-chief, in his opening remarks.

1- UNCERTAINTY IS EVERYWHERE

None of us have ever managed businesses through such a prolonged period of uncertainty, from the aftermath of 25 January, the 2013 revolution, and the currency crunch of 2016 to covid, the end of an era of cheap money, and now a fresh storm characterized by an FX crunch and runaway inflation.

The FX crisis is particularly caustic: How do you transact when you can’t know what the value of an asset will be the day after you acquire it? How do you find the hard currency you need to keep your business running — let alone grow? How do you invest when access to finance means paying what we used to consider “credit-card interest rates” for a new factory line? How do you retain talent when staff are being offered hard currency salaries — and their purchasing power at home is being steadily squeezed by high inflation?

2- A NEW COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

We face a once-in-a-generation challenge from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Where 20 years ago we talked about a “brain drain” to the “West,” today we face massive competition for talent, for capital, and for opportunities across our own region. We’re not only competing with Saudi companies — we're competing with an entire world that wants to go to Saudi Arabia and that still sees solid prospects in the United Arab Emirates.

This raises big questions: How do we find and retain talent when the best and the brightest are being lured to Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai? What is the Egyptian finance industry’s role in the wider region when there’s not just the DIFC, but a rival emerging in KSA?

But our exports are (at last) globally competitive. Successive rounds of devaluation have seen us become a lower-cost base destination than India for everything from call centers to coding and manufacturing. We have the right people in the right geographical location and time zone to sell into Europe, the GCC, and Africa — to say nothing of a big domestic market.

And in the background, there’s a massive realignment happening. “China +1” is now a major theme for manufacturers — are we the +1? Saudi Arabia is making friends with old enemies. Cairo and Ankara are patching things up. Europe’s energy crunch is not going away anytime soon, thanks to Mr. Putin. And the climate revolution is (too slowly) changing the face of business and finance alike.

3- NO MORE CHEAP MONEY

The age of cheap money has come to an end as interest rates rise everywhere in the world. The result has been a drying up of funding for venture capital and even private equity. VCs no longer have an endless line of limited partners asking them to take their money. Startup fundraising in Egypt and the wider region is down massively year-on-year. PE dealflow is flat this year compared to last around the world. Corporates are thinking twice about offshore investment, particularly when they can’t afford to borrow at local-currency interest rates — and when there’s a yawning gap between the parallel and official market rates.

This has massive implications, from the startups that have and will go belly-up to the value we ascribe to both private equity players and development finance institutions.

4- A TURNING POINT FOR FINANCIAL INCLUSION

Mns of people have been brought into the financial system — transforming their lives and opening new doors for entrepreneurs. You can thank good policy from the government and the central bank, a non-bank financial services boom triggered by entrepreneurs and investment banks alike, and a good measure of help from development finance institutions and big, state-owned banks.

But what is financial inclusion, really? Is a wallet sufficient? Is it the ability to transact seamlessly, digitally, everywhere? Is it access to credit? A formal bank account?

What will get the next 20 mn people not just into the financial system, but transacting? How do we define success?

5- TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING THE WORLD

…and nowhere is that as evident as it is in Egypt, where two generations have leapfrogged landlines, wired internet, and bank accounts and moved straight to always-on pocket computers, messaging (everything from chat to generative AI), and having an app for everything. We all overuse the word “disrupt” — to the point that it has become virtually meaningless. But the simple fact is that technology has, in our part of the world, been a net creator of businesses and of meaningful jobs.

We’re now seeing the other side of the coin: Some businesses will be snuffed out by tech. Jobs will be destroyed, not just created, and nobody knows whether the balance will be net positive or negative for those of us who run on “wetware.” Artificial intelligence and the digitalization of all of our businesses are changing the competitive landscape, and we’re only now starting to get our heads around what it means for our businesses and our industries.

6- NEW OWNERS = NEW IDEAS

The ownership structure of our industry is changing. The drying up of venture capital is going to force some startups to pivot, some to shut their doors, and others to look at acquisition offers in a brand new light.

We have too many banks, but we're about to have challenger banks. State institutions have bought heavily into non-bank financial services (of all forms) in the past five years. Government institutions invest in or run VC firms. And yet the state is telling us it will be selling stakes in some financial institutions. An app can make its mark on the retail brokerage industry — but that doesn’t change the fact that we have far too many licenses in circulation. From CIB, Beltone Holding, and e-Finance to Fawry and fresh startups, Gulf investors (most of them sovereign activities) are in town, committing capital, and demanding they be shown the best assets we have.

7- WE’RE ALL REALLY GRUMPY

Our community is unhappy. We have gone through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression — four of the five stages of grief. Only in recent weeks has there emerged a sense that we may just now be getting to acceptance.

We all grumped and complained the first six months of this year, but the leaders of the finance industry (and, increasingly, of other businesses) have accepted that there is no deus ex machina that’s going to come down from the sky tomorrow and make everything better. We need to take action today not just to preserve our businesses and keep teams together in challenging times, but to write the next chapters of our growth stories.

None of us labor under the illusion that the road ahead is easy. Even if there were policy changes tomorrow, it’s not going to magically transform our reality. We have two to three years of tough sledding ahead.

Against that backdrop, we are showing signs of acceptance. Acceptance that some levers are in our hands. Acceptance that we need to sell into other countries. Acceptance that we need to be sure we’re getting the most out of every pound we spend at home. Acceptance that many of us may be looking at a period of margin compression.

But what’s the alternative? To pack up and call it a day? To retire in Somabay? We’re not ready for that, and judging from the mood of more than 30 leaders who agreed to join us on stage over two days, neither are you.

The consensus among our guests is that while we do indeed have 2-3 years of adjustment (once the word “go” is uttered at the macro level), there are immense opportunities on the other side of the hill. Many of those who joined us on stage in Egypt are looking to expand outside the nation’s borders — but Egypt will remain their centers of gravity. Others are moving production lines, back-office jobs, and other functions here.

We’ll dive deeper into each of these themes over the coming weeks as we unpack the Enterprise Finance Forum one panel at a time.

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