{"id":622492,"date":"2018-10-03T04:33:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T04:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enterpriseam.com\/egypt\/2018\/10\/03\/what-were-tracking-on-03-october-2018\/"},"modified":"2018-10-03T04:33:11","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T04:33:11","slug":"what-were-tracking-on-03-october-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enterpriseam.com\/egypt\/2018\/10\/03\/what-were-tracking-on-03-october-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"What we\u2019re tracking on 03 October 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s PMI day:<\/strong> The purchasing managers\u2019 index for Egypt, Saudi, and the UAE is due out shortly after we hit \u201csend\u201d on today\u2019s issue. You can find the report here<\/a> once it lands at around 6:15am CLT.<\/p>\n

The subscription period for retail investors who want a piece of Sarwa Capital\u2019s IPO begins today<\/strong> and ends next Wednesday, 10 October. The consumer and structured finance firm has set aside 29.5 mn shares for it Egyptian retail offering. Sarwa announced earlier this week<\/a> that it expects to price its IPO at EGP 7.04-8.00 per share, and will announce the final share price on 4 October, once the book building process is complete.<\/p>\n

The Foreign Ministry has a new spokesman: <\/strong>Ahmed Hafez<\/a>, who previously served in Washington and Tel Aviv and was most-recently co-head of Egypt\u2019s mission in Ramallah, has taken the post.<\/p>\n

And Egypt has a new ambassador to Ottawa: <\/strong>Outgoing spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid is heading to Canada\u2019s capital city (watch, runtime: 1:46<\/a>), where we wish him good luck with the mosquitos of August. Winter in Canada is a bear, Mr. Ambassador, but skating on the Rideau is nothing short of magical. And fall? There\u2019s nothing like it.<\/p>\n

<\/a> ** #6 More than half of the world\u2019s population is now middle class<\/strong>, and five more people join the ranks of the comparatively well-off every second of the day. That\u2019s the conclusion of the World Data Lab, a non-profit. Nearly 90% of the new members of the middle class are in Asia, while Africa is seeing comparatively little growth in the Middle Class. The middle class is the engine of modern economies, <\/strong>the Financial Times<\/a> quotes World Data Lab as saying: \u201cabout half of global economic demand is generated by household consumption, with half of this coming from the middle class.\u201d The outfit defines \u201cmiddle class\u201d as someone earning between USD 11 and USD 110 a day on a 2011 purchasing power parity basis.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good morning for: Women in business. <\/strong>California has become the first state in the US to require that companies headquartered in the state appoint women to their boards of directors. Corporations with at least five directors will need to ensure a minimum of two of them are women. CNBC<\/a> and the Wall Street Journal<\/a> have more. And following up on the appointment of Gita Gopinath as chief economist at the IMF (which we noted yesterday<\/a>), the Financial Times<\/a> has a gallery looking at how the dismal science, which has \u201clong had a gender problem,\u201d is slowly becoming more inclusive as \u201cwomen follow the IMF\u2019s Christine Lagarde into top jobs\u201d in the field.<\/p>\n

The resident 11-year-old doesn\u2019t think much of economics<\/strong>, but she approves, saying, \u201canything a boy can do, a girl can do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ranking the managers: <\/strong>The New York Times gives a hint at where top US university endowments rank in a quick look at Harvard\u2019s fund<\/a>. The Harvard Management Company\u2019s return of 10% \u201ctopped the 8.4% gain that a typical 60-40 portfolio of Standard & Poor\u2019s 500-stock and aggregate bond index equities would have delivered\u201d in HMC\u2019s fiscal year ending 30 June, but the endowments at MIT (+13.5%) and the University of Pennsylvania (12.9%) did better, as did Notre Dame (12.2%).<\/p>\n

Collusion of the very best kind: <\/strong>Egyptian business leaders need to ensure they pay a livable wage to all of their employees, and we\u2019re suggesting folks start speaking amongst themselves about what that figure should be. Take inspiration from Jeff Bezos who, under attack from The Donald for everything under the sun, kept his mouth shut and then announced yesterday that Amazon is going to roll out a minimum wage of \u201cUSD 15 per hour in the US and GBP 9.50 in the UK, with a higher GBP 10.50 rate in London.\u201d And guess what? It won\u2019t be a disaster for Amazon\u2019s books: <\/strong>\u201cIn terms of financials, it doesn\u2019t move the needle all that much,\u201d the Financial Times<\/a> quotes on analyst as saying, \u201cestimating it would at most amount to less than 1 per cent of the USD 235 bn in revenue Wall Street analysts are forecasting for this year.\u201d Reuters<\/a> and the Wall Street Journal<\/a> also have the story, which is front-page news in the global business press today. Axios<\/a> puts it all in perspective.<\/p>\n

The Nobel Prize in Medicine<\/strong><\/a> went to researchers in the United States and Japan for their work on training the body\u2019s immune system to attack cancer, in the process creating a new class of cancer drugs. And three researchers, including the first Canadian woman to win the prize, shared theNobel Prize in Physics<\/strong><\/a>for work on lasers that has made possible everything from eye surgery to micro-machining. The Nobel for chemistry is due to be announced today<\/strong>, while the peace prize will be handed out on Friday and the prize for economics on Monday.<\/p>\n

In miscellany this morning:<\/p>\n