Maersk is returning its MECL service to the Suez Canal

Good morning, friends. It’s a morning fit for regulators, with our three top stories connected by a common thread.

The House has rewritten the Mostakbal Misr bill, dialing back several provisions in the first draft. The joint committee narrowed the authority’s tax relief, tied its jurisdiction to land it owns, capped its fee increases, and restored the state auditor’s oversight. However, it leaves in place its core restructuring as a standalone body reporting to the president. We unpack all the rewrites below.

The Monetary Policy Committee held rates for a third straight meeting on Thursday, and the number that made the call easy is worth pausing on: monthly inflation went negative, and annual eased to 14.3%. The CBE framed the hold as a response to “better-than-expected macroeconomic developments.”

And finally: Private ins. funds have grown into an EGP 201 bn pool of long-term domestic capital, up 20% y-o-y and half a year before the FRA’s 2026 target of EGP 150 bn. We have more below on the bigger question: will the money begin behaving differently?

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The EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum is back — and this year, we’re giving the full day to the one question on every business leader's mind: What does AI actually mean for your company, your people, and your own job?

Leaders in New York, London, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore are asking the same things, and nobody has built a playbook that works yet. We're all figuring it out in real time — and for Egypt, the stakes are unusually high.

Egypt could leapfrog a generation on the back of this technology — or watch AI hollow out the industries and jobs we can't afford to lose. The leaders who get literate early will be the ones who get to decide which road we take.

Every session on stage answers one question: “So, what do I actually do about it?”

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Welcome back, Maersk

Danish shipping firm Maersk is bringing back Suez Canal transits on its India-Middle East-US East Coast service (MECL), it said in a statement. Maersk’s return is an early signal of recovery for our Suez Canal revenues, which rose 23% y-o-y to USD 4.8 bn in FY 2025/26 after dropping sharply during the prolonged Red Sea crisis and subsequent Hormuz disruptions.

The need for speed: The MECL will now sail via the Red Sea instead of around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, which it had used since the Houthi attacks began in late 2023. Maersk described the Suez and Red Sea route as the fastest and most efficient way to connect India, the Middle East, and the US East Coast, saying the shift will improve westbound transit times by roughly seven days and eastbound by up to 14 days. The carrier is also adding a new eastbound port of call in Jeddah starting in August.

REFRESHER- Last week, Maersk and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd announced their jointly run AE15 service — connecting Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe — would make the same switch. Maersk restored the same route in January following successful trial voyages, only to revert to the Cape of Good Hope route in March when the US-Iran conflict escalated and the Strait of Hormuz bottleneck intensified.

An ultra-sound investment

Elezaby Medical’s Tatweer Medical Industries is teaming up with China’sMindray to pump USD 100 mn in investments into its ultrasound and X-ray manufacturing facility in Badr City over the next three years — up from just over USD 12 mn in current investments, Al Arabiya reports, citing CEO Taha Abdelnasser. The plant’s investment cost will hit USD 16 mn by year-end before crossing the USD 100 mn mark by year three, expanding its production lines from two products to 10.

Why it matters: The facility currently has an annual capacity of 2k ultrasound and 1.5k X-ray units. Egypt needs roughly 5k ultrasound units a year, so the plant alone could cover close to half of domestic demand. Tatweer will leverage Mindray’s established distribution network to export medical hardware across Africa.

Hassan Allam eyes the exchanges

Our friends at Hassan Allam Holding are considering taking some of their real estate and infrastructure subsidiaries public on the EGX, Gulf exchanges, or on both, Chairman and CEO Hassan Allam was quoted as saying on the sidelines of BMG Economic Forum at the London Stock Exchange. The parent conglomerate will stay private.

Why it matters: Listing foreign-facing subsidiaries in Gulf markets would give Hassan Allam access to funding while keeping the parent conglomerate private. The group is executing a USD 10.5 bn project backlog, split evenly between Egypt and markets including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Libya, and Oman. Saudi is the group’s largest foreign market with over USD 2 bn in active contracts, followed by the UAE, Libya, and Oman. Hassan Allam’s real estate development arm, Grova, launched the SAR 3.3 bn Noor Khuzam project in Riyadh alongside local partners.

REFRESHER- We have been tracking Hassan Allam’s capital market moves since last year, when the group filed to list a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) on the EGX. The SPAC was rebranded to Grova Venture Capital and had its issued capital raised to EGP 100 mn to fund future acquisitions. When market chatter suggested the blank-check vehicle was a backdoor listing for Hassan Allam Construction, the company denied those rumors.

PSA-

WEATHER- The temperature readings are tricky in Cairo today, with a high of 36°C and a “feels like” of 38°C, according to our favorite weather app.

We’ve got that nice sea breeze going in Alexandria, with a high of 30°C and a “feels like” of 33°C.

Data point

USD 43.1 bn — that’s how much Egyptians abroad sent home in the first 11 months of FY 2025/26 (July-May), a 31.2% y-o-y rise from USD 32.8 bn a year earlier, according to central bank data. Remittances held their double-digit growth streak through May, bringing in USD 3.9 bn, up 14.7% y-o-y from USD 3.4 bn in May 2025.

The big story abroad

Regional tensions are escalating. Iran said it closed the Strait of Hormuz after firing a warning shot yesterday at a Cyprus-flagged container ship it said took an “unapproved route.” Iran’s navy said the waterway will remain closed “until further notice” or “until the end of US interference in the region,” and vowed to respond to any retaliation with a “forceful response.”

The US military responded by launching its third round of strikes against Iran in a week, US Central Command (Centcom) said. The fresh round of strikes — targeting Iranian air and surface-surveillance radars, missile and drone storage facilities — aims to weaken Iran’s ability to attack commercial vessels, Centcom said.

Meanwhile, in the AI world: Apple has filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI and two of its former employees of stealing hardware designs, claiming that the ChatGPT developer’s top brass enabled this behavior. The lawsuit names two former Apple employees who have joined OpenAI, alleging improper transfer of sensitive information. The iPhone maker claims that over 400 of its former employees have joined the AI company.

Speaking of AI, not everyone can ride the wave: Analysis by the Financial Times has found that while 28 companies that pivoted to AI saw their combined market cap initially surge by USD 8.7 bn, more than half of those valuation gains have since evaporated. Findings suggest a trend of struggling companies using buzzy AI name changes to target retail investors and secure short-term market gains — the SEC calls this “AI washing.”

A memory drought may be coming: South Korean semiconductor giant SK Hynix’s CEO Kwak Noh-jung has sounded the alarm over an incoming memory supply shortage in 2027, set to be the worst ever in history. The company is forecasting that customer demand will continue to outstrip supply capacity even after 2030. Kwak’s comments echo similar sentiments from Nvidia and UBS.

An imminent change of ownership at Vodafone is making waves. French b’naire Xavier Niel is set to increase his ownership of Vodafone Group to become its largest shareholder after UAE telecom group e& agreed to sell him its entire 16.2% stake for about USD 6 bn. Some analysts say that Niel will exert influence over Vodafone’s strategy, catalyzing the firm's cost-cutting and freecash flow growth.