War or not, institutional investors had a big appetite for MNT-Halan’s USD 126 mn IPO on the Egyptian Exchange

It’s a huge morning for capital market watchers — investors, regulators, and pundits alike: Foreign institutional investors have flocked to MNT-Halan’s USD 126.5 mn IPO on the Egyptian Exchange.

Why it matters: MNT-Halan and Banque du Caire are in the market with two of the most exciting IPOs we’ve seen in more than a decade. MNT was out first, and if CEO Mounir Nakhla and his bankers are successful, the offering could re-open Egypt’s IPO window and mark us as a stable destination for equity investors who have given us a cold shoulder for the better part of the last 15 years.

The catch: You could feel our community collectively hold its breath when a Houthi attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport killed 13 and injured more than 300 over the weekend. It was already a miracle that MNT and BdC were in the market amid a hot war in the Gulf. Cranking it up a notch with a brutal attack on civilian infrastructure is the type of thing that would traditionally have sent foreign investors fleeing for the exit — and make investment bankers lose their nerve.

Instead, it’s a story of “plenty of appetite, no seconds”: Fintech giant MNT-Halan’s private placement closed 11.2x oversubscribed yesterday, according to a statement seen by EnterpriseAM. More than 300 investors across more than 10 countries — including multiple GCC countries, the UK, France, Switzerland, South Africa, and Egypt — put in orders for the 272 mn shares at the EGP 24.50 offer price.

Sound smart: Excluding cornerstone investors CIB and London’s Redwheel, the institutional offering was more than 19x oversubscribed. CIB and Redwheel have together been allocated more than a third of the base offering.

No seconds, though: The prospectus allowed the private placement to be upsized by up to 80 mn shares, which would have taken the offering to 25% of the company from 20%. Any increase needed FRA approval and had to be announced at least three days before retail subscriptions close on 15 October. That window has passed with no announcement. MNT shares should make their EGX debut on 20 October.

Retail investors have until tomorrow to get their orders in: The 48 mn-share public tranche closes on 15 October.

REFRESHER- MNT Investments B.V. is selling 320 mn shares, good for 20% of MNT-Halan’s issued share capital, through a private placement to institutional investors and a public offering in Egypt. Our friends at EFG Hermes acted as global coordinator for the offering.

ADVISORS- EFG Hermes is joint global coordinator and joint bookrunner along with Citi for MNT-Halan’s offering.

What to watch for next: Banque du Caire is looking to raise USD 460 mn or so in a blockbuster IPO that has so far attracted significant interest from foreign institutional investors, as we’ve previously reported. CI Capital is quarterbacking the transaction as lead global coordinator and joint bookrunner, while EFG Hermes is joint global coordinator and joint bookrunner.

WANT TO GO DEEPER? MNT-Halan CEO Mounir Nakhla was our guest on Making It, our weekly podcast with the nation’s top business leaders, last week. Listen to the episode on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Anghami | YouTube

Also happening this morning

We have a look at Egypt’s balance of payments in the state’s last fiscal year (it closed in surplus thanks to a big one-off), and our friends at Hassan Allam Holdings are making their Oman real estate debut. We have the rundown on both of these stories — and a lot more — in this morning’s news well below.

SPAC on track

MEANWHILE- Blank-check company Spark for Acquisition wants to list on the EGX’s main market, according to an EGX statement. That would make it the fourth SPAC on the bourse. We still don’t know who owns or runs the company: its FRA record lists only an office address in New Cairo. Spark has applied to list 1 mn shares at EGP 10 par value, for an issued capital of EGP 10 mn, the regulatory minimum. The request still has to go before the EGX’s listing committee.

Just in time: Spark got its FRA license on 17 September, around the same time Tafra Investment Group SPAC was approved for establishment. SPAC rules give newly licensed vehicles one month to apply for an EGX listing, or risk losing their license. Spark filed with four days to spare.

REFRESHER- The EGX has three SPACs on its books. Catalyst Partners Middle East, Egypt’s first, started trading late last year. Next, Hassan Allam’s vehicle secured a temporary listing in July 2025 and has since been rebranded as Grova Venture Capital. OG Capital followed with a temporary listing in May, giving it until around 19 November to put an acquisition target to a shareholder vote. It hasn’t announced one yet. Dutch PE firm RMBV also applied to the FRA in May to set up a SPAC of its own.

What’s next: Once listed, Spark’s clocks start ticking — three months to raise its issued capital to at least EGP 100 mn, six months to put a target to a shareholder vote, and two years to close a transaction, all counted from listing day.

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Factory aid

The government has earmarked EGP 10 bn to help struggling factories restructure and resume production, Asharq Business reports, citing comments by Industry Minister Khaled Hashem at the Canada Egypt Business Council conference. The initiative will operate along three main avenues: technical assistance, financial backing, and connections to fresh investors.

More on the way: Hashem said the ministry plans to announce industrial complexes for small and medium-sized manufacturers today, and is preparing a financing initiative for SMEs. It is also working on a scheme to give factories soft loans for renewable energy, targeting some 1k MW of capacity for 7k factories.

This development follows the CBE’s launch of a new EGP 1 bn fund, which takes equity stakes in distressed factories and restructures them so they can resume operations. The Distressed Factories Restructuring Fund targets industrial firms with viable operations that have hit financial or operational trouble. CI Capital manages it, and the head of the Federation of Egyptian Industries, Mohamed El Sewedy, chairs its investment committee. Five banks back it: the National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr, the Arab African International Bank, the Agricultural Bank of Egypt, and the Export Development Bank of Egypt. The fund takes equity and works alongside management rather than lending, Assistant to the Industry Minister Emad Abdel Hamid told us last December.

Data point

EGP 262.9 bn — that’s the value of the 29 syndicated loans the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) managed in 9M 2026, according to a press release (pdf). The state-owned lender served as facility agent, the bank that runs the loan on behalf of the whole syndicate, on 20 of those transactions, capturing a 10.48% share of all syndicated loan agreements in Africa over the period, it says.

That put NBE at the top of Bloomberg’s league tables for Egypt as facility agent, mandated lead arranger, bookrunner, and documentation bank. It also ranked first in Africa as bookrunner and documentation bank, and fourth in MENA as facility agent and bookrunner.

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.

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The gas crunch gave Egypt every reason to speed up its energy transition, and the question now is who builds it and who pays for it.

Power Trip, our four-part signature series, turns this week to the transition and the private developers now building much of Egypt’s new power.

Issue II looks at how the deals behind these projects work, who is lending to them, and why the country is building a nuclear plant at El Dabaa alongside its solar and wind farms. We also look at whether the regional crisis has finally pushed industry toward renewables, and at the factories Egypt is counting on to build its own panels, batteries, and turbines.

Coming straight to your inbox today.

PSA

WEATHER- Cairo is warming up today, with a high of 32°C and a low of 20°C — a two-degree bump from yesterday as a brief hot spell rolls in, according to our favorite weather app. Watch for strong winds kicking up dust and morning fog, with a slight chance of light rain.

It’s a notch warmer on the coast in Alexandria too, with a high of 31°C and a low of 20°C.

The big story abroad

US authorities arrested a Saudi OpenAI employee for allegedly planting a recording device at the company's San Francisco headquarters. A security team found the device hidden in toilet paper behind a TV in an executive meeting room at its headquarters on 30 September. OpenAI fired the employee and said it found no sign that customer data, source code, or model weights had been stolen.

The US Treasury Department fined Bank of America more than USD 1 bn for violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and failing to report over USD 5 bn in suspicious activity. This included “suspicious transactions indicative of Chinese Money Laundering Networks, fraud, and potential trade-based money laundering with a substantial nexus to the southwest border,” the Treasury Department said.

Google released its flagship AI model Gemini 4 Argon to developers and businesses worldwide. The model is billed as particularly effective at complex, multi-step work across coding, finance, legal affairs, cybersecurity, and scientific research.

*** 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: After repeated supply shocks, we look at who is building Egypt’s new wheat silos and warehouses, and who is paying for them.