MNT prices EGX debut at EGP 24.5 per share

Wednesday, 7 Oct 2026

MNT prices EGX debut at EGP 24.5 per share

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Today at a glance

The Big Story Today

MNT’s subscriptions open today at EGP 24.5 per share.

DATA CENTERS

A consortium is forming to take an equity stake in an Egyptian data center, but the sector’s barriers run deep.

Banking

AI in local banking “in its infancy,” and the pause is deliberate.

WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

NBE’s investment arm snaps up El Sewedy Capital’s 40% stake in CIRA education JV.

WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

No AI layoffs at Egyptian banks, but the entry-level pipeline is the real pressure point.

WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

FTSE Russell removes Egypt from watchlist, keeps it as Secondary Emerging Market.

Also on our Radar

Mashreq Egypt bags ICSA award for corporate banking digitalization push.

PLANET FINANCE

Tech is leading the wealth boom.

HARDHAT

What stands between Egypt’s mineral finds and its next new mines.

WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

Al Ahly Capital is buying out El Sewedy from CIRA’s Damietta university venture

Good morning, lovely people. The long weekend is almost here, but before you log off, we have more coverage from the EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum. If yesterday’s coverage was on the sunny side, what we’re covering today is a more cautionary theme on what could go wrong. The worries shared by our panelists included cyberattacks that move faster than companies can patch, junior staff who no longer learn the job by doing it, and a 400-500 MW data center build-out where only about 20 MW is committed.

“We do a lot of hyping of AI,” eFinance’s Ahmed Sobhy said on stage, and Liquid C2’s cybersecurity veteran Sherif Shaltout admitted he’s “never been more scared.” While nobody on our stage predicted mass layoffs, almost everyone agreed the work itself, and who is ready for it, is changing faster than companies, regulators, or schools can keep up.

Topping our newswell (again): MNT-Halan finally priced its EGX debut. Subscriptions open today at EGP 24.5 per share for 20% of the company — the EGX’s biggest IPO since e-Finance. CIB and London’s Redwheel have already cornerstoned more than a third of the base offering. What we learn in the coming days is whether retail demand matches that institutional vote of confidence.

Banking AI in Egypt is “in its infancy” by design, HSBC Egypt’s CEO said. With the regulatory and legal framework still being defined, the sector is on pause for now, and the bank is testing AI on small projects.

Post for Investment is pulling together a consortium for an equity stake in a data center. Meanwhile, the Electricity Ministry approved EGP 3 bn for new transformer zones at El Alamein and Dabaa. Both are steps forward, but developers face a circular challenge: lenders demand signed customers before financing, customers demand a finished facility before signing, and you can’t build the facility without financing in the first place.

** A QUICK PROGRAMMING NOTE- EnterpriseAM is taking a publication holiday tomorrow in observance of the Sixth of October holiday and will be back in your inboxes at the usual time Sunday morning.

***

ARE YOU MORE OF A LISTENER? Morning Drive is a 10-minute summary of today’s issue crafted for you to enjoy with your morning coffee, while getting the kids ready for school, or driving through the morning rush. And if you like it, tell your friends to tell their friends. They can find us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever they get their podcasts.

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The future of engineering in the age of AI with Youssef Rizk: What do you risk when you build your business on top of the world’s frontier AI models?

Youssef Rizk, CEO of Windfall and co-founder and CTO of Wondercraft, says, “Look at Google’s graveyard.”

We discuss the present moment in tech and take a pause to ponder the future. Does AI replace people? Or does it add more work?

Listen to the episode on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Anghami | YouTube

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The Gulf’s sovereign funds and largest companies are committing bns to AI infrastructure at home and to AI companies in the US and beyond. EnterpriseAM AI + Innovation reports on where that capital goes, who controls it and what it is actually buying.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we also cover the startups and established firms across MENA putting AI to work, and how it is changing jobs, education and the way business runs.

It’s sharp, analytical and skeptical journalism that ignores hype and is laser-focused on informing our readers, not pleasing our sources.

Changing seats

El Sewedy exits CIRA JV to NBE’s investment arm: Al Ahly Capital — the investment arm of state-owned National Bank of Egypt — is buying El Sewedy Capital Holding’s 40% stake, or 30 mn shares, in CIRA’s Damietta university venture, Al Borsa reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The transaction, which secured approval from the Egyptian Competition Authority earlier this week, will leave CIRA’s 60% stake untouched. It’s expected to close before year-end. The purchase price was not disclosed.

REFRESHER- CIRA and El Sewedy set up the vehicle as a 60-40 JV and secured a 58-feddan plot in New Damietta in 2021 for a university we’d clocked at EGP 2.5 bn. CIRA CEO Mohamed El Kalla said in August the university is due to open in September 2027, one of two on the company’s near-term slate. Al Ahly Capital and CIRA launched Al Ahly CIRA for Educational Services in 2021 with EGP 2 bn in capital and CIRA holding 51%. That vehicle went on to build Saxony Egypt University.

It’s official: we’re off the watchlist

Global index provider FTSE Russell has removed Egypt from its watchlist for a potential demotion to frontier market status, retaining the country as a Secondary Emerging Market, according to a statement. Egypt was placed on the watchlist in September 2025 after the number of Egyptian constituents in the FTSE Emerging Index (Large and Mid Cap) fell to just one, below the minimum of two. The government’s economic reforms and Egyptian Exchange initiatives have since boosted market liquidity, allowing a second Egyptian stock to qualify for the index in the March and September 2026 reviews, FTSE Russell said.

IN CONTEXT- Egypt has already cleared the market cap threshold based on June data, and the securities count that decides the rest is being taken from FTSE’s September semi-annual review of its Global Equity Index Series (GIES), effective from market open on 21 September, according to a July notice.

Why it matters: Removing Egypt from the watchlist should bring “mostly positive sentiment, with no passive outflows expected following the announcement,” EFG Hermes' Ahmed Difrawy told us last month. The sentiment would likely stem from Egypt avoiding the outflows a downgrade could have triggered.

Nobody’s getting fired

Don’t expect AI-driven layoffs at Egypt’s big financial firms through 2027, executives said at the EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum on Monday. HSBC Egypt CEO Todd Wilcox expects headcount to hold steady as jobs move away from routine processing rather than disappearing. Meanwhile, Algebra Ventures’ Omar Khashaba predicted “dislocation rather than disruption,” and CEO of local and regional markets at Beltone Holding Khalil El Bawab actually plans to hire, because digital onboarding is bringing in more clients.

The real pressure is on entry-level roles. AI now does the routine analysis that junior bankers used to learn on, costing firms “core capability” and forcing banks to rethink how they train new joiners, Wilcox and El Bawab both said. Some firms are already changing how they hire: BCG Egypt’s Bassem Fayek said the office replaced one of five case interviews with an AI round where candidates solve problems with an LLM.

The national picture is more worrying than any single firm’s outlook. A study from the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies (ECES) tracking nearly 10k Egyptian job postings found that nearly 75% of workers at high risk of AI displacement cannot transition into alternative careers. The market will keep rewarding generalists and people who “think in terms of systems,” Khashaba said. Dean of AUC’s Onsi Sawiris School of Business Sherif Kamel argued that human capital is the “elephant in the room,” calling for AI to be embedded across education alongside critical thinking rather than taught as a separate subject.

IN CONTEXT- An MIT study found AI more economical than human labor in only 23% of tasks. For Egypt, where labor costs are lower, the break-even point is even farther off, meaning the economic case for mass replacement is not there yet.

The 72-minute heist

AI has made hackers dramatically faster and companies here at home aren’t keeping up, cybersecurity executives told the EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum on Monday. Attackers now get from breaking in to walking out with data in under 72 minutes, down from five hours a year ago, Palo Alto Networks’ Waseem Youssef told the audience, citing the company’s latest Unit 42 report. “The difference now is the economics of the attack,” not their intentions.

The window to patch is shrinking, too. Exploits for newly patched vulnerabilities now arrive in under 23 hours, down from a day and a half, meaning that more attacks hit systems before companies have patched them, Fortinet’s Mohamed ElGarf added. Across the Middle East and Africa, ransomware and other attacks rose 64% between 1Q 2025 and 1Q 2026, according to ZeroFox data.

Attackers have the edge for now, facing no regulatory hoops, Liquid C2’s Sherif Shaltout said on our stage. AI lets them hit high-value targets alongside thousands of other targets simultaneously using agents that work round the clock. Defenders are still fighting over budgets. One of three executives on the morning panel ranked AI as a top-two priority. SMEs, “the bulk of the economy,” are the most exposed. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I don't think I’ve ever been more scared,” Shaltout said.

Your own AI agent is the new insider threat. Companies are building agents that can move funds or access customer data, and an attacker who takes control of one gets everything it can touch, Youssef says. “I’m not really worried about an AI model that will hallucinate, I’m really worried about what [an agent] can do when it hallucinates.”

Egypt hasn’t been hit hard yet, but it’s on the radar. ElGarf says Egypt has seen “one or two” attacks on healthcare, and “[we’re] seeing so many of the authorities like the Central Bank [among others] put regulations on all the banks related to cybersecurity defenses.” Qalaa Holding’s Chairman and Founder Ahmed Heikal told an earlier panel that three oil and gas companies recently paid “huge sums of money” to unlock their data after cyberattacks.

The fix starts with the basics. Shaltout’s list: least-privilege access, segmentation, and a new KPI, mean time to fix vulnerabilities, because a 15-minute response is now too slow. Youssef’s rule for automating defense: if the action is high-confidence, reversible, and limited in impact, let the machine do it. Otherwise, a human signs off.

Happening this week

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi arrived in Seoul yesterday for a state visit, according to an Ittihadiya statement, marking his first visit to South Korea since 2016. He holds a summit with President Lee Jae-myung on Thursday covering trade, investment, infrastructure, and supply chains, and will join a roundtable with heads of major Korean companies. The South Korea leg is the opening stop of an Asian tour that also includes Malaysia and Indonesia.

PSA-

WEATHER- Cairo is a touch warmer today, with a high of 30°C and a low of 19°C — edging back up from yesterday, according to our favorite weather app.

It’s similar on the coast in Alexandria, with a high of 28°C and a low of 19°C.

And over the weekend, expect to see steady weather in the capital (a high of 30°C) and around 26°C for our friends on the Mediterranean.

The big story abroad

AI and rocket player SpaceX is in the market for USD 40 bn in financing to snap up Nvidia chips, Financial Times reports, citing sources familiar with the matter. The fundraising effort, which Apollo Global Management is expected to lead, seeks about USD 10 bn in bank loans and USD 30 bn in investment-grade debt, and is expected to close next year. Bond group Pimco was among a small number of lenders in talks to fund the blockbuster chip purchase.

An AI-led tech rally has rocketed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite to new closing records yesterday, despite the Fed's first rate hike in three years and a months-long war that has pushed oil to USD 100 a barrel. A handful of tech giants are doing the heavy lifting, with Nvidia hitting a new all-time high after gaining 4.5% over the past week and Meta climbing 24% since mid-August, while most other stocks are falling.

More than 250k people rallied across France yesterday to back high school students demanding more education funding, according to government figures. Police used tear gas and detained nearly 500 people, and some student groups have called for new protests tomorrow.

*** It’s Hardhat day — your weekly briefing of all things infrastructure in Egypt: EnterpriseAM’s industry vertical focuses each Wednesday on infrastructure, covering everything from energy, water, transportation, and urban development, as well as social infrastructure such as health and education.

In today’s issue: We look into how Egypt can dig its way out of the mining industry’s “valley of death,” following last week’s mining forum

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CIRA Education DIPLOMACY M&A Watch South Korea WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

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The Big Story Today

MNT’s subscriptions open today at EGP 24.5 per share

MNT-Halan’s Egypt arm is coming to market at EGP 24.5 per share, according to its FRA-approved prospectus out yesterday, valuing MNT Tech Holding for Financial Investments at EGP 39.2 bn (c. USD 750 mn), by our math. At that price, the base offering of 320 mn secondary shares — good for 20% of the company — would fetch some EGP 7.84 bn (c. USD 150 mn) in gross proceeds.

Trading is expected to start on 20 October, founder and CEO Mounir Nakhla told Asharq Business (watch: runtime: 7:18). Nakhla said another anchor is chipping in — a London-based fund called Redwheel has also signed a cornerstone agreement for about USD 20 mn (c. EGP 1.05 bn). Together with CIB’s commitment of up to EGP 2 bn, that’s up to 39% of the base offering, by our math. Nakhla put it at “more than a third.”

Subscriptions open today and close in mid-October, with no per-investor cap below the full tranche size, according to an EGX notice. Institutional and high-net-worth investors can subscribe through 13 October for up to 272 mn shares, representing 85% of the offering (17% of the company), with minimum orders of EGP 10 mn for institutions and EGP 5 mn for wealthy individuals. Public subscriptions run until 15 October for the remaining 48 mn shares (15% of the offering, 3% of the company) with orders starting at 100 shares.

The float could get bigger still: The private tranche can be upsized by up to 80 mn shares, or 5% of the company, depending on demand, according to the prospectus. That would take the offering to 400 mn shares, or 25% of MNT, and up to EGP 9.8 bn (c. USD 187 mn) at the offer price, by our math. Any upsize needs FRA approval and has to be announced at least three days before public subscriptions close on 15 October.

SOUND SMART- This isn’t a bookbuild in the usual price-discovery sense. MNT is taking orders at a fixed EGP 24.5 a share, meaning the book will tell us how much demand there is and who gets what, rather than where the IPO prices. Much of that price discovery appears to have happened before launch, after months of investor soundings and roadshows across the Gulf, London, and the US. CIB had already committed up to EGP 2 bn as a cornerstone investor on 24 September, suggesting the valuation may have been largely nailed down by then. This means strong demand will show up in the coverage ratio (rather than the final offer price), and any underpricing will show up once the stock starts trading.

At a discount to fair value: The price is about 5.5% below the EGP 25.92 a share fair value set by independent financial advisor BDO Keys, according to the prospectus. It values MNT at about 20x its 2025 net income of EGP 1.98 bn, by our math, against the 28.5x Valu, its closest listed peer, ended the third quarter on, though MNT’s 1H earnings annualized below last year’s. Nakhla pitched the discount to foreign funds at the EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum on Monday, before the price was public, telling those who missed the bourse’s two-year run they can still get in cheap because “an IPO by definition is priced at a discount.”

ICYMI- Nakhla also said that half or more of what the parent company raises through the IPO will come back into the listed company through a capital increase of up to EGP 4 bn. The rest will fund the group’s Turkish business and an acquisition in an Arabic-speaking market he wouldn’t name. Had MNT tried to list in early 2024, he said, it would have raised just USD 30-40 mn, crediting the market for the timing. Investors are “much more comfortable about the macro,” he said.

Who’s locked in, and who isn’t: The parent MNT Investments B.V. must hold on to at least 51% of its stake, and no less than 25% of the company, for at least two years from listing, the prospectus read. CIB faces no such restriction. Its cornerstone agreement, covering up to 4.9% of the company at the offer price, comes with no lock-up or voting conditions, according to the prospectus. The bank can also pull out if a material event hits the group’s financial position, and gets the right to nominate a board member.

ADVISORS- Our friends at EFG Hermes are joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners along with Citi. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (US and English law) and Matouk Bassiouny & Hennawy (Egyptian law) are advising MNT-Halan and the selling shareholder. White & Case (US and English law) and MHR & Partners in association with White & Case (Egyptian law) are counsel to the bookrunners. KPMG Hazem Hassan is the auditor, while BDO Keys Financial Consulting is the independent financial advisor.

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DATA CENTERS

A consortium is forming to take an equity stake in an Egyptian data center, but the sector’s barriers run deep

Post For Investment is putting together a consortium to take an equity stake in a data center, Managing Director and CEO Ahmed Ali Abdelrahman told the EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum on Monday. It is a “very early stage” investment with “too many stakeholders” in place, he said. “Once it is ready, I think we are definitely going to be putting money in it.”

The country has about 15–20 MW of installed data center IT load capacity, Abdelrahman said. Four announced mega projects would push that to 400–500 MW, but only about 20 MW of that total is actually committed, Abdelrahman noted. Building all four mega projects would require USD 4–5 bn, and the funding mix is not clear yet, he added.

Getting one of these facilities off the ground is a circular problem. A 20 MW AI data center — the scale Hassan Allam Digital Infrastructure CEO Mohamed Magdy Allam called “meaningful” — costs USD 600 mn “and even more, depending on the technology.” You need customers to get financing, you need a finished facility to get customers, and you cannot build the facility without financing. “That’s a circular situation where you need to sort of break it one way or the other,” Allam said on stage.

Demand is catching up

Demand is “probably the biggest barrier,” said Ahmed Sobhy, deputy CEO at eFinance Investment Group. “We do a lot of hyping of AI,” he said, but Egyptian customers “haven’t gotten there completely yet.” Allam sees the immediate opportunity abroad: compute capacity is severely constrained across the US and Europe, positioning Egypt to export compute capacity internationally while domestic demand matures.

The hyperscalers that would anchor that demand have not arrived yet. Data sovereignty rules complicate their entry, and the government is “working hard” on a fix, Abdelrahman said. One workaround he points to is “New Cloud”, an aggregation model that buys capacity from several data centers and resells it to hyperscalers. PwC Egypt Country Senior Partner Maged Ezz Eldeen pushed a different solution: the “digital embassy” model, where foreign clients’ data operates under their home country’s rules on Egyptian soil. Data sovereignty “can create demand” in the country, he said, but it “doesn’t help when you try to attract hyperscalers from abroad.” Pointing to international precedent, Ezz Eldeen noted that Estonia pioneered this approach in 2017 by establishing a digital embassy in Luxembourg to ensure government resilience and disaster recovery.

Power is a bottleneck

Getting power to the right plots of land is “the one unlock the sector needs,” Sobhy says. “Power allocation to the right plots of land isn’t happening as quickly as it should.” Egypt’s grid has about 50-60 GW of capacity, Abdelrahman says, and the announced pipeline needs major investment in both generation and transmission to run and cool the facilities.

It looks like the government was listening: The Electricity Ministry has approved a EGP 3 bn expansion of the El Alamein and Dabaa transformer zones, including two new 500 kV substations, specifically to serve data center infrastructure, a government official tells EnterpriseAM. The build will take two years and is part of a wider grid modernization plan to absorb renewable energy.

Financing the build

Lenders do not need to reinvent the wheel, says Lamyaa Gadelhak, chair of Baker McKenzie’s global project finance group. Data centers can be split into different assets (land and buildings, power infrastructure, IT equipment) and each financed separately. Hyperscalers increasingly want the infrastructure off their balance sheets, she adds. “They are software companies, and they shouldn’t be valued as infrastructure companies.”

Ezz Eldeen flags two structural mismatches. The first is currency: local banks can lend in EGPs for civil works, but the imported equipment needs USDs, and those USDs need export credit agencies or DFIs. “Don’t get USDs when all your revenues are in EGP,” he said. The second is tenor, where lenders must synchronize three different clocks: land and buildings are long-term assets, power and cooling equipment are medium-term, while GPU clusters operate on a short-term lifecycle that turns over every three to five years.

No more excuses

The regulatory side is clearing, Allam says. Having been involved since 2021, he credits the government, led by the Communication & Information Technology Ministry, with being “very proactive” in removing regulatory barriers. “This is not an excuse anymore” for private investors, he said. Ezz Eldeen argues the next step is institutional. A data center project currently falls between various government bodies, line ministries, and utility providers. No single body can clear it. Egypt needs a “catalyst like the golden license” to glue those pieces together, he said, noting that frameworks like the digital embassy concept can serve as a similar catalyst to unlock global demand.

The government confirms the interest is real. Discussions are ongoing with multiple international operators for hyperscale data centers, a Communications Ministry official tells EnterpriseAM. These include recent meetings with the US Heka Data alliance. Egypt’s pitch centers on green energy (solar, wind, and green hydrogen) which global tech companies increasingly require as a condition for mega data centers. The government is working across ministries to provide an integrated package: ready land, stable power at competitive prices, submarine cable access, and a supportive regulatory environment.

REFRESHER- Hassan Allam Digital Infrastructure, the partnership between Hassan Allam Holding and A15, committed USD 400 mn to the first phase of a new data center in June after securing an NTRA licence.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia

An Egyptian-Indian JV has secured the contract to build a Riyadh AI data center for Center3 and Humain. Egypt’s Hassan Allam Construction and India’s Sterling & Wilson take an estimated SAR 750 mn (USD 200 mn) for the first phase, covering civil, architectural, MEP, and infrastructure works, according to Meed. Phase one carries 16.2 MW of IT load and is due in 16 months. A second phase scales the site to 50 MW, across one standard-density hall and four high-density halls of 11.2 MW each.

The site is part of the 1 GW program Center3 and Humain launched in December. Center3, STC Group's digital-infrastructure arm, and Humain are building data centers across the Kingdom for high-density workloads and large-model training, starting at up to 250 MW and using the early sites as a template as they scale toward 1 GW.

Humain has piled up data-center commitments quickly: Beyond the Center3 JV, it has a USD 5 bn AI Zone with AWS, a 500 MW site with Elon Musk’s xAI, a multi-gigawatt pipeline with DataVolt, and 211 land plots across the Kingdom. This venture is separate from Humain's SAR 8.8 bn, 250 MW agreement with Al Moammar Information Systems, which began issuing work orders this month.

For Hassan Allam, the data center win adds an AI line to a Saudi order book already built across the Kingdom’s flagships, almost always through its local arm and a partner. At Diriyah, Hassan Allam Construction Saudi and UCC Saudi took a USD 727 mn award for the Waldorf Astoria superblock; with AlBawani it landed a USD 490 mn contract for the Saudi Museum of Contemporary Art; and with OHL Arabia it’s building Saudi Arabia Railways' Dammam 2nd Industrial City connection. At Neom, the group is developing Container Terminal 1 and its marine services area alongside El Seif and China Harbour Engineering, and working with KAUST on what's described as the world's largest coral-reef restoration.

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AI Data Centers Hassan Allam Holding Post for Investment

Banking

AI in Egyptian banking is “in its infancy,” and the pause is deliberate

Egypt’s financial sector is still holding back on AI while the rules get written, executives said at the EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum on Monday. Banking AI in Egypt is “a little bit in our infancy because the regulatory and legal framework is still being defined,” HSBC Egypt CEO Todd Wilcox told the audience. “Everybody is under a bit of a pause,” so the bank is testing only on small projects for now.

The brakes

The regulatory brake: Current regulations mean client data “cannot be on the cloud” — it has to stay in-house or on a local cloud due to data sensitivity, CEO of local and regional markets at Beltone Holding’s Khalil El Bawab said on stage. Microsoft’s Middle East and Africa Growth Markets General Manager Mirna Arif said companies ready to transform “want to, but then regulation would prevent them from doing so.” The fix needs policy, industry training, and workforce readiness to advance together, with regulation as the “key enabler,” she added. El Bawab sees an “opportunity” to build compliant infrastructure from the start, and described the regulator as “very open to those developments.”

The structural brake: Even if the regulatory questions were resolved tomorrow, a second barrier would remain. Most banks run on legacy systems, including inconsistent data and outdated platforms. Capgemini Egypt CEO Hossam Seifeldin said “you cannot run an AI system on such a platform. You need to have the right foundation.” That foundation takes time and capital to build, and few institutions have made the investment yet, he added.

The accountability brake: When an AI tool is involved in a financial decision, the question of who takes the hit is not theoretical. “Who is going to be sued? It’s the managing director or the CEO of the company, not the machine,” El Bawab said. Wilcox agreed, adding that AI does not fix broken governance: “If you have got poor governance and no accountability, it simply leads to making bad decisions faster.”

BUT- The shift is already happening whether banks have formalized it or not, Algebra Ventures Managing Partner Omar Khashaba countered, saying AI is “making decisions” within organizations today. The firms that capture the judgment (the institutional memory of why decisions get made) will build a lasting advantage as AI models become commodities. But none of that changes who is ultimately responsible. “Accountability resides 100% with humans,” he said.

The cost of inaction

The risk of moving too slowly is just as real. Wilcox drew a parallel to a previous technology shift: bankers used to calculate mortgages with paper factor tables, and when financial calculators arrived, “half the bankers didn’t make it; they couldn’t transition.” His warning: if you are not able to keep up and learn, you will be caught.

IN CONTEXT- Two things are happening while banks wait. The first is a global warning, as Moody’s flagged in August that banks racing into AI risk “systemic dependency” on a handful of loss-making Silicon Valley vendors — a concentration risk that echoes the governance caution the forum speakers raised. The second is that the Egyptian regulator is not idle on the broader digitization front. The Central Bank of Egypt approved electronic Know-Your-Customer (eKYC) the same month, letting banks verify customers entirely online, and has introduced digital banking licenses and regulatory sandboxes. The broader digital framework is being built — the AI rules are the piece still in development.

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Moves

Holcim Egypt taps Medhat Ismail as its CEO

Holcim Egypt appointed Medhat Ismail (LinkedIn) as CEO, succeeding Khaled El Dokani (LinkedIn) who moves up to Region Head of Asia, Middle East & Africa at Holcim Group, according to a company statement. Ismail brings more than 25 years in cement and building materials across Egypt, the UAE, Iraq, Türkiye, Tanzania, and France, including nearly two decades at Holcim Group since 2007 — most recently as CEO of Lafarge Iraq, with prior stints as CEO in Tanzania and regional head of Geocycle for the Middle East and Africa.

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Also on our Radar

Mashreq Egypt bags ICSA award for corporate banking digitalization push

Mashreq Egypt won the Excellence in Corporate Banking Digitization award at the Innovation & Excellence Awards 2026, hosted by the International Center for Strategic Alliances, according to a press release (pdf). The award recognizes the bank’s digital corporate banking push, anchored by New Corp — an API-driven platform built on microservices architecture that lets corporate clients manage liquidity, trade finance, cross-border transfers, and import-export credit facilities through custom dashboards.

REMEMBER- Mashreq launched Neo Corp in Egypt in February 2025, after rolling out the platform in Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain the year prior — making Egypt the first market outside the UAE to get the full product suite. Mashreq was named the Middle East’s Best Digital Bank for the fifth consecutive year at the Euromoney Awards in May 2024.

There’s a fund for that

Our friends at Beltone Asset Management have teamed up with Amtaar Capital to establish a multi-issuance real estate investment fund, according to a press release (pdf). The fund aims to raise EGP 2 bn in total over several issuances, with the first expected to bring in EGP 500-700 mn. Beltone Asset Management will set up and run the fund and pick its assets according to its own investment strategy, while investors will buy into the first issuance through Amtaar Capital’s digital platform.

How will it work? Investors can buy fund units on Amtaar Capital’s platform from EGP 1k, getting exposure to income-generating property without owning a whole unit. They could earn rental income and capital gains, depending on how the fund performs.

Buying it back

Bonyan for Development and Trade’s board of directors has greenlit a treasury share buyback program for up to 4% of the firm’s issued capital, according to a press release (pdf). Bonyan’s stock trades at an enterprise value per sqm of EGP 88.5k, about a 50% discount to its portfolio’s asset value as assessed by an FRA-approved independent valuer, based on the 5 October closing price of EGP 4.08. The buybacks will run on the EGX from today to 5 November 2026, subject to market conditions and regulatory rules.

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ALSO ON OUR RADAR Financial Regulatory Authority Mashreq Bank Travco

PLANET FINANCE

Tech is leading the wealth boom

The concentration of wealth in tech is reshaping the global b’naire class. Nine of the world’s ten richest people now owe their fortunes to US technology companies, while the AI boom is creating new fortunes across chips, data centers, and other infrastructure, according to Bloomberg.

The 100 tech b’naires among the world’s 500 richest people added USD 845 bn to their combined wealth in 9M 2026 — their biggest gain for the first nine months of any year, according to the Bloomberg B’naires Index.

The AI boom and surging US tech stocks are driving the gains, pushing the group’s combined wealth to USD 4.6 tn, or 36% of the index’s total, despite tech b’naires accounting for only a fifth of its members. All seven co-founders of Anthropic joined the wealth ranking in June after the AI company closed a funding round valuing it at USD 965 bn.

MEANWHILE- B’naires outside technology collectively lost USD 62 bn over the same period, while US b’naires captured 94% of the index’s net gains.

New entrants to the index include the founders of Suzhou TFC Optical Communication and Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing, as well as DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Lin Tsung-chi, founder of server-rail maker King Slide, built a USD 9.5 bn fortune as data center demand surged.

A league of his own: Elon Musk added USD 310 bn to his fortune through September, accounting for around 40% of the index’s total increase. He also became the world’s first t’naire, following SpaceX’s merger with xAI last February. The company went public in June.

But the boom isn’t bulletproof: The world’s 500 richest people reached a combined USD 13.4 tn in June, but their wealth has since fallen 6% to USD 12.6 tn as markets slowed and investors grew more cautious about some of the biggest AI names.

Larry Ellison is a case in point. His wealth has fallen USD 196 bn over 2025, while Oracle’s credit-default swaps have climbed near record highs as investors question the borrowing required to finance its AI infrastructure expansion.

The US is taking the lion’s share, but other countries are joining the club: Since 10 September, all 10 of the world’s richest people have been American — the first time that has happened since Bloomberg began tracking b’naire wealth in 2012. However, China is producing its own new b’naires as Beijing pushes for greater technology independence.

MARKETS THIS MORNING-

Asian markets were in the red earlier today. Japan’s Nikkei was down 0.3%, while South Korea’s Kospi was down 0.5%. Meanwhile, US equities were broadly in the green.

EGX30	53,298	-0.5% (YTD: +27.4%)
USD (CBE)	Buy 52.25	Sell 52.39
USD (CIB)	Buy 52.22	Sell 52.32
Interest rates (CBE)	19.00% deposit	20.00% lending
Tadawul	10,589	+1% (YTD: +0.9%)
ADX	9,993	-0.2% (YTD: +0.0%)
DFM	5,907	-0.0% (YTD: -2.3%)
S&P 500	7,819	+0.6% (YTD: +14.2%)
FTSE 100	10,542	+0.4% (YTD: +14.2%)
Euro Stoxx 50	6,272	+0.5% (YTD: +8.2%)
Brent crude	USD 101.64	+1.1%
Natural gas (Nymex)	USD 3.14	+0.8%
Gold	USD 4,180	-0.2%
BTC	USD 85,303	-0.4% (YTD: -2.6%)
S&P Egypt Sovereign Bond Index	1,126	+0.0% (YTD: 13.4%)
S&P MENA Bond & Sukuk	146.80	+0.5% (YTD: -3.4%)
VIX (Volatility Index)	15.46	+1.8% (YTD: +0.4%)

THE CLOSING BELL-

The EGX30 fell 0.5% at yesterday’s close on turnover of EGP 9.1 bn (20.7% below the 90-day average). Local investors were the sole net buyers. The index is up 27.4% YTD.

In the green: AMOC (+3.3%), EFG Holding (+2.8%), and E-finance (+2.4%).

In the red: Misr Cement (-5.8%), Qalaa Holdings (-3.3%), and Juhayna (-2.7%).

Tags:

Financial Markets Planet Finance

HARDHAT

What stands between Egypt’s mineral finds and its next new mines

Most mineral finds in emerging markets stall long before anyone builds a mine on them. Investors and explorers at this last month’s Egypt Mining Forum say the country's geology is sound, but what’s missing is the technical, regulatory, and financial setup to carry finds across.

The “Valley of Death” is what the industry calls the gap between discovering minerals and financing a mine, and it’s the one Egypt is aiming to close. Before lenders put money behind a find, it has to be measured and reported according to international standards. The best known is Canada’s NI 43-101, which requires a qualified geologist or engineer to sign off on how much metal is really there. The government wants mining to grow from under 1% of GDP to 5-6% by 2030, and to get there, it has raised the Mineral Resources and Mining Industries Authority’s (MRMIA) investment budget by a third from EGP 15 bn to EGP 20 bn in FY 2026/27. The goal is an industry that no longer relies on Sukari, a single commercial gold mine.

The data explorers are waiting for

Mining booms usually start with junior explorers — the small firms that search untested ground for new deposits and take on the early risk. They made about 60% of the world’s mineral discoveries over the decade to 2019, according to MinEx Consulting. What they need most is accurate geophysical data. The better the data, the less money they sink into holes that turn up nothing.

That’s what Egypt’s first nationwide aerial survey in 42 years is meant to provide. The government hired Spain’s Xcalibur Smart Mapping to run the USD 60 mn survey, due by end-2027. CEO Andrés Blanco tells EnterpriseAM the company is waiting on final approvals and permits, which it hopes to get “before end of year.” Once they come through, the program can launch within 30-45 days.

The survey starts wide, then narrows: Xcalibur will scan the whole country for gravity and magnetic anomalies, then fly high-resolution electromagnetic surveys over the most promising areas. Pairing the data with AI will speed up decisions on where to drill, Blanco says. He sees Egypt’s Nubian Shield as an extension of the mineral-rich Arabian Shield, which points to lithium and copper alongside gold.

Who pays for the data? The survey will produce the data every explorer needs, and investors don’t agree on who should cover the cost. The government should pay for it and give explorers the data at close to no cost, “because the data would cut exploration risk and pay the state back many times over,” In2Metals Chairman Naguib Sawiris told the audience at the Egypt Mining Forum.

Others disagreed. Aton Resources CEO Tonno Vahk wants the cost shared, and said Egypt shouldn’t look to Saudi Arabia, home to the Arabian Shield, as a model. The Kingdom can afford to pay for its own geological data, he said, because its mining push is backed by deep public money and isn’t purely economic.

New money, new rules

Demand is coming from across the industry. Sawiris says his companies have applied for 19 blocks, and the results are still pending. Akh Gold bid for five in June through its parent company, In2Metals. Ankh Resources also made its own bid that same month. Even Capital Limited, which drills for AngloGold Ashanti and Aton, reportedly wants nine gold blocks of its own. The juniors are raising money abroad to fund exploration: Red Sea Resources and Ankh plan to list in Toronto, in January and H2 2027. Investors say drawing in global players and getting more juniors listed would only be the beginning.

From sharing output to paying royalties: Until 2019, Egypt ran mining on a production-sharing system, taking a share of whatever a mine produced. Since the 2019-2020 reforms, companies keep their output and pay taxes and royalties instead, including a 5% royalty on gold.

The bigger change on the ground has been security, Sawiris told the audience. Over the past nine months, the army has cleared illegal miners off concession areas, which he calls “a revolution.” Illegal mining had been the biggest obstacle for junior explorers, he says, until the army decided the gold “belongs to the people of Egypt” and can’t be taken without royalties and taxes being paid. Security in remote areas matters more than anything for keeping investment stable, Vahk said, and the government’s dialogue with miners has improved a lot since 2015.

The door is now open year-round: Since last June, MRMIA has run an open-block system for gold, phosphate, talc, kaolin, and other ores. Investors can apply for any block at any time, and the first offer on a block triggers a 30-day bidding window while the rest stay open. The government is also courting Australian miners ahead of a new exploration program in the Eastern Desert.

Not all the ground is in play: State companies such as Shalateen Mineral Resources hold promising concessions for years without developing them or opening them for partners, Sawiris says. Shalateen’s charter keeps it on the old production-sharing model and it offers its areas on its own platform rather than MRMIA’s open tender. Sawiris is hoping for a hard deadline, with private investors ready to step in as partners, because ground left idle earns nothing. Shalateen did not respond to our request for comment.

Exporting rock vs. building the plant

Processing is where the value leaks out. Egypt holds the ore for plenty of minerals it still imports in finished form — it buys more than USD 200 mn a year of silicomanganese for its steel and heavy industry, at around USD 900 a ton, even as it sits on the manganese to make the alloy itself, Assistant Industry Minister for Strategic Industries Mohamed Zada told the audience. Phosphate shows the size of the prize. Egypt holds an estimated 3.1 bn metric tons of geological phosphate reserves, the world’s third-largest, per the Petroleum Ministry — but exported raw, a ton sells for USD 70-140 depending on grade; processed into fertilizer it fetches USD 700-1k, with the World Bank’s diammonium phosphate benchmark at about USD 790 a metric ton in August. Capturing that jump, investors say, is what would lift mining’s share of GDP in a serious way. Zada says expanding local plants, drilling, and transport should let Egypt replace its silicomanganese imports within about two years before a second phase opens exports to neighbors, with a petroleum-and-industry coordinating committee linking extraction to local manufacturing.

None of that works without steady supply and infrastructure. A processing plant needs mines that can keep the ore coming, and remote mines often have to build their own power and water. Sukari Gold Mines, the joint venture that runs the Sukari gold mine, built a 36 MW solar plant with battery storage that cuts diesel use by more than 20 mn liters a year, plus a 25 km water pipeline, Vice Chair Hoda Mansour told the audience.

Even with power and water solved, the local ecosystem barely exists. Oil and gas had a century to build a network of domestic service firms; mining has two professional drilling contractors and two sample labs, Vahk says, and no local engineering-and-construction firms to build processing plants — explorers fly in international contractors one project at a time, which “increases our cost tremendously.” He gauges it takes 10-12 years to make it worth service providers’ while to stay. Skilled labor is as scarce: the industry still leans on foreign specialists and draws fewer young recruits than oil and gas or tech, Sawiris says, which is why he’s sponsoring Egypt’s Geological Museum to pull students toward the field.

How long it all takes

Sawiris thinks mining could one day out-earn Egypt’s entire oil and gas sector, though he didn’t put a number on it. For scale, petroleum product exports alone brought in about USD 2.3 bn in the first half of 2026. By MRMIA’s own math, gold and silver will bring in USD 557 mn this fiscal year, up 255%, even though gold output is set to grow just 4.9%.

The honest answer is a decade-plus. Vahk expects it to take “10 years before we see the actual benefits,” and by his count it takes juniors that long just to build out a national geological database and keep service providers in the country — a timeline the global figures echo. Operating mines take an average of 14 years to get from discovery to production, according to S&P Global. At Aton’s Abu Marawat mine, the date has already moved: the ministry had pointed to first gold in 2H 2026, but Vahk now targets early 2028, the deadline set by the company’s January 2024 mining license. The aerial survey meant to seed the next round of discoveries hasn’t started either, still waiting on permits. The government says it wants to speed things up, with the prime minister ready to offer incentives — even partnerships — to get projects into production faster, according to a cabinet statement.

Tags:

AKH Gold Ankh Resources Hardhat mining Shalateen Mining Sukari gold mine

CALENDAR

OCTOBER

7-9 October (Wednesday-Friday): EgyMedica, Cairo International Convention Center.

9-11 October (Friday-Sunday): Autotech Egypt, Egypt International Exhibition Center.

10-11 October (Saturday-Sunday): Egypt Women’s Health Summit (EWHS), Cairo Marriott Hotel.

12-18 October (Monday-Sunday): IMF & World Bank Annual Meetings, Bangkok.

13-14 October (Tuesday-Wednesday): GTR North Africa 2026 Conference, Dusit Thani Lakeview Cairo.

19-22 October (Monday-Thursday): UfM Economic Forum, Cairo.

19-24 October (Monday-Saturday): Egypt 2026 Forum, The St. Regis New Capital.

26-28 October (Monday-Wednesday): IEX Egypt, Egypt International Exhibition Center, Cairo.

29 October (Thursday): Monetary Policy Committee’s seventh meeting of 2026.

NOVEMBER

5-7 November (Thursday-Saturday): ICA Annual Conference 2026, Cairo.

6-8 November (Friday-Sunday): Global Entrepreneurship Festival, JW Marriott Hotel, New Cairo.

7-10 November (Sunday-Wednesday): Cairo ICT Forum, Egypt International Exhibition Center, New Cairo.

10 November (Tuesday): Cityscape Egypt Forum, Cairo.

DECEMBER

7-10 December (Monday-Thursday): Food Africa, Egypt International Exhibition Center, Cairo.

17 December (Thursday): Monetary Policy Committee’s eighth meeting of 2026.

EVENTS WITH NO SET DATE

2H 2026: Operations at Deli Glass Co’s new USD 70 mn glassware factory kick off.

2026: The Egyptian-American Economic Forum.

4Q 2026: Banque du Caire IPO.

2027

20 January-7 February: Egypt to host the African Games.

1-3 February (Monday-Wednesday): Agri Expo, Cairo International Convention Center.

April 2027: Tenth of Ramadan dry port and logistics hub to begin operations.

29 September - 2 October (Wednesday-Saturday): Cityscape Egypt Exhibition, Cairo.

EVENTS WITH NO SET DATE

2027: Egypt to host EBRD’s annual meetings.

2027: Egypt-EU Summit 2027.

End of 2027: Trial operations at the Dabaa nuclear power plant expected to take place.

September 2028: First unit of the Dabaa nuclear power plant begins operations.

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