We have news of two cases of inbound foreign direct investment for you folks this morning. And while it won’t surprise any of you that Saudi wealth fund PIF is taking more of e-Finance, Wadi Poultry’s sale of a stake to Japan’s Mitsui is interesting and took us by surprise.

#1- Mitsui & Co. gets a slice of Wadi Poultry. The Tokyo-headquartered and -listed company agreed to purchase a stake in Egyptian broiler chicken producer Wadi Poultry, statements from both companies showed on Friday (here and here, pdf). The size of the stake and the investment were not disclosed, though Mitsuit’s release suggests that the buy is big enough that it will hold Wadi as an associate. Mitsui acquired the stake in the Freiji-family-owned company through a UAE-based vehicle.

Wadi is looking to harness the partnership with Mitsui to grow at home and throughout the region. Mitsui has been expanding in north and west Africa since its 2018 acquisition of a business in Morocco.

Wadi Poultry captures the full value chain, from the production of breeding chickens and broilers to processing and distribution. It employs some 2.6k people.

ADVISORS: Zilla Capital acted as the financial advisor to Wadi Group and Adsero-Ragy Soliman was counsel.

#2- e-Finance is now a little bit more Saudi: Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has raised its stake in EGX-listed fintech player e-Finance by two percentage points to 27% by purchasing freefloat shares, e-Finance Chairman Ibrahim Sarhan told Al Arabiya in an interview on Thursday. The Saudi Egyptian Investment Company — the PIF’s investment arm in Egypt — had reportedly been looking to increase its ownership of the company to 28%.

BACKGROUND- The Saudi wealth fund acquired 25% of the company last year for EGP 7.5 bn, becoming its single-largest shareholder and getting it two seats on the board. This was part of a wider USD 1.3 bn investment in state-held shares of EGX-listed companies.

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