Good afternoon, friends, and happy Monday. In our Headlines section, we take a look at Banque du Caire’s first day of trading on the EGX, Cairo’s renewed talks with Brussels over the EU’s carbon border levy, and JPMorgan’s higher inflation forecast for Egypt.
On the Made in Egypt front, we meet the founder behind Almah. Manal Saleh, who co-founded the Egyptian Clothing Bank, turns donated vintage fabric from the 1950s and 1960s into contemporary designs, and she tells us how fabric that didn’t suit the families the bank serves became a fashion label.
We also have the latest Worth It? review, for which our newsroom tested scents from four local brands, priced from EGP 400 to c. EGP 1.2k, and tells you which ones are worth it. Elsewhere in today’s issue, we tune into a horror prequel worth your time, catch up on the sports roundup, and more.
Now, the news…
Become a morning regular
What’s moving Egypt’s economy, in your inbox every weekday. Free, in English or Arabic.
Here are the stories driving the day, both at home and abroad.Banque du Caire (BdC) closed its first session on the EGX up 0.19% at EGP 5.31 a share, following a blockbuster IPO that drew heavy investor demand despite the regional market jitters brought on by the war. The stock reached EGP 5.68 in the opening minutes and dipped as low as EGP 5.25, below the EGP 5.30 offer price, before the close. The bank’s market value at close was EGP 80.98 bn (c. USD 1.51 bn), against EGP 80.83 bn at the offer price.
Trading was heavy. Some 373.1 mn shares, worth EGP 2.02 bn, changed hands across 30.1k trades. That’s 4.1x the c. EGP 488 mn worth of CIB shares that traded on an average day over the past six months and 1.6x the EGP 1.26 bn MNT-Halan saw on its debut. The EGX30 closed down 0.70%.
One analyst tells us pricing at full fair value left little room for a first-day pop. “There was no discount to give investors a reason to buy more after listing,” Okaz Asset Management Managing Director Randa Hamed tells EnterpriseAM. “Trading around the offer price is the natural result.”
The IPO reflects “the resurgence of foreign institutional appetite for tier-one Egyptian assets,” Maged El Ayouti, co-head of investment banking at joint global coordinator EFG Hermes, said in a statement (pdf).
REFRESHER- Banque Misr sold 45% of BdC for EGP 36.37 bn (c. USD 680 mn) in a stellar IPO, pricing at the top of its range. Four foreign funds — Helikon, Redwheel, Sustainable Capital, and Waha — committed USD 256 mn as cornerstone investors, and the EBRD and the IFC came in later. Institutional orders covered the private placement 5.95x, EFG said, and the retail tranche was 27x covered. Retail allottees can sell their shares back at the offer price until 1 December.
The government is negotiating again with Brussels over “preferential treatment that gives Egyptian exports a longer chance” under the EU’s carbon border levy as the mechanism nears full application, a senior government official tells EnterpriseAM. It is also reviewing how countries in Asia and Latin America handled the mechanism to work out its options. What Cairo wants now, another government official tells us, is a phased timetable tied to several Egyptian environmental measures so that goods in the designated sectors keep reaching the EU more easily.
MEANWHILE-JPMorgan raised its year-end inflation forecast for Egypt to 14.3% from 13.4%, Asharq Business reports. The revision reflects currency pass-through after the EGP shed roughly 7.3% against the USD during October on hot-money outflows.
^^We’ll have more on these stories in tomorrow’s edition of EnterpriseAM.
☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- It’s looking like another warm fall day in the capital tomorrow, with the mercury rising to 31°C before dropping to an overnight low of 21°C, according to our favorite weather app.
MAKING HEADLINES ABROAD-
The digital pages this afternoon are dominated byreports of hacking targeting emergency alert appsin Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine’s Air Alert app sent false warnings Sunday night of nuclear and chemical threats as well as the risk of street combat in Kyiv and other cities. Later, Russia’s Emergency Situations mobile app reported it was hit by a cyberattack that allowed attackers to send false information to the public. One of the fake alarms on Ukraine’s app was broadcast in the Russian language and said that Russia was about to launch a hypersonic Oreshnik missile, which can carry nuclear warheads. It has not been made clear whether both attacks are connected in any way or who might have carried them out.
MEANWHILE- Crypto scammers are putting the industry on edge, with Binance recording USD 3.64 bn in net outflows following Thursday’s record USD 6.3 bn hack, which the FBI attributed to North Korea. In nearly 10 hours, the company recorded USD 4.65 bn in withdrawals and USD 1 bn in deposits, leaving net outflows equivalent to 2.1% of Binance’s USD 171 bn in total assets. Withdrawal volumes have declined since, and the platform is moving to cover its losses with an ins. and security fund and USD 6 bn raised from its corporate treasury.
Manal Saleh’s (LinkedIn) fashion brand turns donated vintage clothing into contemporary designs, and all of its gains go back to the Clothing Bank.Almah, the sustainable label she co-founded, is built on fabric that reaches the Egyptian Clothing Bank but doesn’t meet the daily needs of the families it serves: classic, high-quality pieces from the 1950s and 1960s that are worth more reworked and sold, with the revenue paying for new clothes for more children.
Saleh graduated from Cairo University’s engineering faculty and worked in the field briefly before the charity sector took over. She went on to co-found three of Egypt’s largest NGOs: the Egyptian Food Bank, the Egyptian Healing Bank, and the Egyptian Clothing Bank. After years on their boards, she moved into a full-time executive role running operations at the Clothing Bank 10 years ago. “Most of my life has been in the charity sector, and I’ve been fully dedicated to operations since,” she tells EnterpriseAM.
The Clothing Bank goes beyond emergency relief to what Saleh calls “developmental clothing”: school uniforms and professional wear for people entering the job market. Donations come from households, factories, retailers, importers, and exporters. As donors’ trust deepened, rare family stock from the 1950s and 1960s began arriving. “The fabrics were excellent and classic, but by design they don’t meet the basic daily needs of the neediest families,” Saleh says. “Recycling them into art pieces would let us clothe far more children in new, practical clothes.”
The team sat down with The Clothing Bank’s marketing head to work out how to turn those fabrics into value, and a branding agency proposed the name Almah, derived from water. “Water is always there, and nature recycles it: it becomes vapor, then ice, then water again,” Saleh says. “It stands for something that won’t die and won’t be thrown away.” Youssre Abdelkader joined as creative director, with an academic background in fashion, sustainability, and multi-use design.
Almah designs in reverse. Instead of sketching first and buying fabric after, the team sorts the available stock by color, fiber family, weave, and pattern, then designs. “We look at what’s in our inventory first and classify it, and after that we start designing,” Abdelkader says. The hard parts: the source of a fabric is sometimes unknown, and designs have to be repeatable. Saleh says an evening dress can mean combining three or four blouses, “something no designer was taught to do.”
The market also had to catch up. “In 2019 and 2020 it was hard to convince anyone to pay a high price for a piece made from old clothes,” Saleh says. Friends who would never have bought secondhand now buy only recycled pieces. A 2023 appearance on Shark Tank was a harder sell: investors saw a handicraft hobby, not a business. Saleh and Abdelkader took that as a challenge to prove recycling can scale.
That produced a three-tier structure. Two seasonal collections a year, spring/summer and fall/winter, each carry six high-end designs. An everyday line takes common pieces in the stock, such as shirts, blazers, or skirts, and makes small changes that allow recycling in under a day, Abdelkader says. The offcuts feed an accessories line, so nothing goes to waste. This year, the team is adding machine learning models to identify fabric type and its cotton or linen share, and to tell valuable material from cheap blends.
Almah’s presence abroad is limited for now to regional and international fairs in Finland and Saudi Arabia, in keeping with the administrative cycle of a charitable organization. Exports are part of the plan.
Egypt’s fragrance market ranges from the corner shops on every street that mix scents to order to online brands that have built a loyal following, especially among Gen Z. For this edition of Made in Egypt’s Worth It?, our newsroom tested scents from four local brands, priced from EGP 400 to c. EGP 1.2k. Here’s our honest take on each.
Nspired
Nspired is probably the best-known among the up-and-coming local fragrance brands. It makes Egyptian-made scents modelled on releases from houses like Lancôme and Dior. We tried three: Bella Vita, inspired by Lancôme’s La Vie Est Belle; Greek Icon, inspired by Paco Rabanne’s Olympéa; and Black Sugar, inspired by YSL’s Black Opium.
The brand captures the essence of the originals closely enough to make strong local alternatives. The scents come close to a match, though they lose out on longevity and projection. They still last a reasonable six hours on clothes. Bottles come in 50ml and 100ml at fair prices, and online orders can be exchanged or returned after you’ve tried the scent. Our only complaint is that the first spray can be a little overpowering before it settles.
Did Nspired accomplish something new? Yes. Dupes aren’t new, but close matches at these prices, backed by a returns policy, are a step above the corner-shop version.
Is it worth it? Yes. The quality is right for the price.
Best for: Anyone who wants a designer scent profile without the designer price.
Price: EGP 485 to EGP 795.
Where to buy: Online via the website or visit one of the branches listed on the brand’s Instagram.
Nuit
Nuit has built quite the following on social media. Founder Salma El Khamisy (LinkedIn) has given a masterclass in how storytelling shapes the relationship between a brand and its customers, introducing her scents through a series of short videos.
We’ve been customers since launch and have tried several of its products, like Head Turner, Born in Milano, and Rum. Some Nuit scents share notes with international fragrances, but what sets the brand apart is a handful of products that are original. It also uses quality ingredients that leave no marks on clothes.
Longevity is moderate, at three hours at most on clothes, though a bottle left to macerate longer before use can last beyond that. The downsides: after a while, some of our bottles started leaking, which is a serious flaw given that prices keep rising. We’d also prefer a choice of bottle sizes rather than 30ml only.
Did Nuit accomplish something new? Yes. Original scents in a market dominated by dupes, sold through a founder-led storytelling playbook that other local brands would do well to study.
Is it worth it? Yes, especially Rum for autumn and winter and Head Turner for spring and summer. Both offer good longevity and moderate projection by local standards.
Best for: Anyone who wants something original rather than a copy of a designer scent.
Breathe builds its scents on high-concentration Swiss fragrance oils, which it says ensure purity and staying power. We tried Cut a Dash, inspired by YSL’s Libre, and Head Over Heels, which is loosely reminiscent of Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Baccarat Rouge 540.
The quality of the oils shows in the longevity and projection, both of which last a long time. The formulas are balanced enough not to stain clothes. The brand also sells complementary products like a scented body gel, which moisturizes the skin and helps the fragrance last through the day. On the downside, most of its signature releases lean toward heavy oriental and oud scents, which may not suit fans of florals or light summer fragrances. Sizes are also either very small (testers and 10ml) or large (80ml), with nothing in between.
Did Breathe accomplish something new? Somewhat. Its staying power and the body gel set it apart, though the range still leans on inspired-by scents.
Is it worth it? Yes.
Best for: Anyone who wants a scent that lasts all day, and fans of oriental and oud fragrances.
Siwa specializes in warm, sweet blends, offering its own creations alongside scents inspired by international fragrances. We tried Layering Vanilla, inspired by Kayali’s Vanilla 28.
The blend is well made and very close to the original, dominated by vanilla, brown sugar, tonka, and amber, and it lasts relatively long. The brand also earns points for offering three bottle sizes (30ml, 50ml, and 100ml), so buyers can try a scent at a smaller size and lower cost before committing to the full bottle. The catch: the first spray gives off a sharp, noticeable alcohol smell, which could be a problem for anyone with allergies.
Did Siwa accomplish something new? Somewhat. The scent itself is a dupe, but the three-size range lowers the cost of trying before you commit.
Is it worth it? Maybe, if you’re luckier than we were and get a batch where the alcohol doesn’t overpower the oil.
Best for: Fans of warm, sweet vanilla scents who aren’t sensitive to alcohol.
Missed this morning’s edition of EnterpriseAM? Here are the top stories in a nutshell.
The governmentborrowed about EGP 4.3 tn from the domestic marketin the first four months of FY 2026/27, funding the year almost entirely at home. The monthly split runs EGP 967 bn in July, 969 bn in August, 1.3 tn in September, and 1.08 tn in October. Almost all of it is refinancing rather than new money;
Qualified Egyptian and foreign companies that commit to pay a land plot’s full price in USD wired from abroadget priority on any plot offered on installmentsand skip the price bidding, under a new “priority reservation” mechanism the Housing Ministry announced for November’s land offerings. The entry ticket: register on NUCA’s foreign-investment portal and wire at least USD 100k from abroad by SWIFT, plus USD 5.5k;
Orascom Construction expects tocomplete its merger with Euronext-listed OCI in December. OCI shareholders approved the move on 30 October, after securing Orascom Construction shareholders’ approval in January. Orascom Construction’s board will meet on Thursday to approve a capital increase and allot 97.2 mn new shares to OCI, subject to the agreement’s remaining conditions;
Russia’s Rosatom is in talks tosupply Egypt with floating nuclear plants, Reuters reports, after CEO Alexei Likhachev named us alongside Togo, Namibia, and Tanzania as countries in active discussions. Rosatom is offering 100 MW units under a power purchase agreement model, with servicing and refueling done in Russia. Each unit can run for up to 60 years. No further details were given on capacity, unit count, or terms for Egypt.
Back to domestic action tonight in the Egypt Capital Cup: Wadi Degla and Zamalek go head-to-head in Round 2 of the group stage at 5pm, broadcast live on ON Sport Max. A few hours later at 8pm, Al Ahly and Al Mokawloon take the field on ON Sport.
Over in the English Premier League, Matchday 9 wraps up with Newcastle vs. Everton at 10pm on beIN Sports 2. The two sides met just four days ago, when Everton secured a 3-1 W in the Carabao Cup, so expect a rematch with an edge.
Other major European league fixtures we’ll be keeping an eye on:
Sassuolo vs. Fiorentina — Serie A, 7:30pm, Starzplay;
Lorient vs. Brest — Ligue 1, 9:45pm, beIN Sports 5 (the Breton derby, moved from Saturday);
Atalanta vs. Parma — Serie A, 9:45pm, Starzplay;
Deportivo vs. Osasuna — La Liga, 10pm, beIN Sports 4.
ICYMI-
Arsenal ended a long Anfield wait. The Gunners beat Liverpool 1-0 yesterday for their first league victory at the ground since 2012. Kai Havertz scored in the 16th minute, tapping in a Declan Rice cross after Alisson’s error. Liverpool controlled long stretches, and Florian Wirtz hit the bar with a freekick, but they couldn’t find an equalizer. Arsenal are now three points clear on 24; Liverpool are on 15, nine back.
Real Madrid secured a3-0 victoryover Racing Santander. The result was settled before half-time. Kylian Mbappé scored a penalty in the 11th minute, Jude Bellingham made it two in the 21st, and Yan Diomande hit a long-range third in the 36th. It was Madrid’s fourth straight league victory — a week after beating Barcelona in El Clásico — leaving them three points behind the leaders.
Trabzonspor beat Gaziantep2-0. Stefan Savić scored in first-half stoppage time from a corner, and Ernest Muçi added a second from distance in the 61st minute. Mo Salah played the full 90 minutes without a goal or assist.
**The EnterpriseAM Fantasy Football League is live. Join the Classic League and lock in your picks — click on this link or use the code hm029y to join.
For decades, the nameCrystal Lakehas been synonymous with the iconic hockey mask worn by Jason Voorhees across the legendary Friday the 13th horror franchise. Now, the new prequel series winds the clock back before Jason’s rise to focus on his mother, Pamela — tackling a haunting question: How does a mother grieving the tragic loss of her child morph into one of the most infamous killers in horror cinema?
The plot: Pamela’s (Linda Cardellini) mental state rapidly deteriorates following the drowning of her son, Jason, in Camp Crystal Lake. Refusing to accept his death because his body was never recovered, her sorrow steadily mutates into an all-consuming obsession. Her path crosses with Police Chief Levon Brooks (William Catlett), who tries to help her navigate the trauma.
Before long, deeper mysteries unravel beyond the initial drowning, dredging up a murky past alongside a string of suspicious murders. As investigations collide with the buried secrets of local townspeople, the narrative tightens — pushing Pamela toward deeper isolation and violent extremes in her relentless quest to protect her son’s memory.
What we liked: As the body count rises, the ripple effects of profound loss intertwine with mystery and police procedurals, all while delivering the requisite dose of gore and visceral kills long-time franchise devotees expect. Linda Cardellini’s standout performance serves as the emotional spine of the production, skillfully balancing raw human vulnerability, psychological decay, and violent impulses. While the pacing stumbles occasionally and subplots can feel slightly overcrowded, the brooding ambiance and psychological tension remain the show’s undeniable strengths.
The verdict: Across its eight episodes, the series provides a fresh angle on a classic horror universe, moving past mindless slasher tropes to dig into the psychological origins of one of cinema’s most iconic antagonists. Despite a few narrative missteps, its deep connective tissue to franchise lore makes it well worth a watch for psychological horror fans — especially if you’re still looking to hold on to the Halloween spirit.
WHERE TO WATCH- Crystal Lake is streaming on OSN+. Watch the trailer on YouTube (watch, runtime: 2:26).
The EGX30 fell 0.7% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 10 bn (9.3% below the 90-day average). International investors were the sole net sellers. The index is up 15.7% YTD.
In the green: Telecom Egypt (+3.1%), CIB (+2.9%), and Juhayna (+1.1%).
In the red: Mopco (-6.1%), Eastern Company (-5.8%), and Abu Qir Fertilizers (-4.7%).
This one’s for the old-school crowd. Musical legend Mohamed Fawzi is getting a theatrical tribute at The Theater, Movenpick in 6th of October City, with performances on select dates from Thursday, 5 November to Saturday, 14 November. Titled Fen Alby, the show celebrates the iconic singer and composer’s legacy through a song-and-dance journey of his life and artistic career, featuring some of his timeless classics. The show kicks off at 9pm every night, with tickets available on TicketsMarché.
Egypt Edition 
MENA+ Edition 
UAE Edition 
Saudi Edition 
AI + Innovation (MENA) 
Infrastructure 
Share Issue
