The 2016 ABANA Achievement Award Dinner honoring BlackRock chief Laurence Fink gets underway Monday night at 6pm Eastern time at the Pierre Hotel in New York. The next morning, the ABANA Conference 2016 gets underway, also at the Pierre, at 8am with a focus on “the Egyptian economy, sovereign wealth fund investing and how Middle East Policy under the next President will affect US investors.” Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy and Egyptian American Enterprise Fund chief Jim Harmon are due to speak. (ABANA was founded in the early ‘80s as the “Arab Bankers Association of North America.”)

What’s happening with 4G? The board of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority is due to decide the fate of the spectrum rejected by the three incumbent mobile network operators on Wednesday (12 October). NTRA is reportedly mulling the idea of bundling the spectrum and making it available in an auction in which both domestic and international players could bid. None of the incumbents have asked to re-open talks, an unnamed NTRA official tells Al Borsa reported. Meanwhile, hell hath no fury like a regulator scorned: The NTRA has reportedly decided to continue the old system for international gateway pricing for the three incumbent MNOs, the newspaper reports. The system will cost Vodafone Egypt EGP 3.9 bn and Orange Egypt some EGP 3.4 bn. The new system would have charged each MNO EGP 1.8 bn, the source added.

NI Capital will complete its evaluation of companies slated for an IPO this week, government sources tell Al Shorouk. The evaluation is a crucial step in restructuring the companies ahead of the sale and determining the final list of companies which will be put up. The Investment Ministry is currently working with Banque du Caire and Banque Misr to see whether some of their 300 subsidiaries will be divested ahead of the sale. NI Capital’s CEO Ashraf El Ghazaly had previously stated that he expects Egypt “to privatise two or three state-owned companies via listings on the stock exchange in the first year of a privatisation program.” BdC, which as we noted last week has narrowed its list of potential investment banks for its IPO, is expected to list as early as 1H17. Finance Minister Amr El Garhy will be drumming up interest in New York among investment banks for the IPO in the coming days, Al Borsa reports.

Fall conference season is in full swing: There is the 2nd Annual Leasing Conference entitled “New insights to stimulate financing instruments”, due to be held at the Four Seasons Nile Plaza Hotel on Tuesday. Also taking place that day is the two-day Global Islamic Economy Summit, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, while The Factoring Role in promoting SMEs conference is set to take place on Wednesday.