EnterprisePM — Egypt enters partial lockdown as stores, restaurants to close at 9 pm for the next 15 days.

BREAKING- Madbouly announces semi-lockdown measures ahead of a five-day Eid break: Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly just announced that all stores, malls, cafes and restaurants and public gathering places will be shuttered at 9 pm every night starting from tomorrow until 21 May. All conferences, concerts, and events for the public have been cancelled all day for the next two weeks. He did not make changes to the current policy on prayers at mosques and churches. The move comes as a precautionary measure as daily covid infections have risen to 1,090, the highest since January.

Public parks, beaches will be closed during the five-day Eid break: Madbouly also officially announced that Eid El Fitr holiday will be from Wednesday, 12 May to Sunday, 16 May. But if you were planning on going to the beach or park, best change them, as these will be closed during the holidays.

Meanwhile, Egypt will receive a total of 4.9 mn doses of covid-19 vaccines this month, Health Minister Hala Zayed said during a cabinet meeting today, according to a statement. The earliest of these will be a shipment of 1.7 mn doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine next week as well as another 1.7 mn shipment of the same vaccine by the end of the month as part of the Covax program. We’re also expecting 1 mn doses of Sinopharm to arrive during the month over two deliveries and 500k doses of the also-Chinese Sinovac vaccine. Egypt is still waiting for Sputnik and Johnson & Johnson vaccines to arrive, and will begin locally manufacturing the Sinovac vaccine starting next month.

IN OTHER VACCINE NEWS- WHO tuts against Sinopharm’s safety, but confident in its effectiveness: The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that it had “very low confidence” in the safety of the Sinopharm vaccine with experts worried about the risk of serious side-effects, according to Reuters, which snuck a peak at the WHO report. The organization is confident, however, in the effectiveness of the vaccine and its ability to prevent the disease. Clinical trials proved the Sinopharm vaccine to be 78.1% effective after two doses, just slightly below the 79% noted by Egypt’s health regulators.

THE BIG STORY TODAY- A listing drizzle coming? Integrated Diagnostics Holding (IDH) could potentially be the second company to list in Egypt this year after the EGX Securities Registration Committee this morning approved its plans to list 5% of its shares on the Egyptian bourse. This comes off the heels of education management company Taaleem’s listing last month. We cover the story in greater detail in the Speed Round below.

ALSO HAPPENING NOW- Reconciliation talks are underway in Cairo between Egyptian officials and a Turkish delegation led by Ankara’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal. The talks — which according to Asharq aim to make headway on some of the biggest sources of tension between the two countries such as Libya and the Ikhwan — will wrap tomorrow.

** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

• How many petchem complexes can we fit in Ain Sokhna? More than one apparently, after the government signed off on a USD 7.5 bn refinery that will operate alongside Carbon Holdings’ planned USD 11 bn Tahrir facility.
• Ever Given remains in chains: An Ismailia court has rejected Shoei Kisen’s appeal against last month’s seizure of the Ever Given container ship, meaning the mega-vessel will remain in Egypt until at least May 22, when a second hearing is scheduled.
• More fighter jets, please: Egypt will receive 30 Rafale fighter jets from French defense firm Dassault Aviation after inking a USD 4.8 bn agreement.

THE BIG STORY ABROAD- Surprise, surprise. King Cheetos is back, and the media is losing it: Removed from most social media, Donald Trump has taken matters into his own hands, creating a website that will publish content “straight from the desk” of the former US president, reports BBC. Trump’s senior advisor Jason Miller had hinted at a social media platform that would be launched, but says this website is not it and that he would have “additional information coming on that front in the very near future.”

Trump’s attempt at the spotlight comes as Facebook’s oversight board just now announced that he’s staying off the platform, after being suspended four months ago after the Capitol riots, according to a statement. While Twitter has banned Trump indefinitely, Facebook could still go back on the decision as the board has “ not specified the appropriate duration of the penalty.”

Bibi could be on his way out: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mandate to form a coalition government after a deadlocked March election result expired today. Netanyahu missed a midnight deadline for putting together a new coalition government, the Associated Press reports. This opens the possibility for the Israeli president to task opposition leader Yair Lapid with forming a government, ending the reign of Israel’s longest serving prime minister.

** So, when do we eat? We sit down for iftar at 6:35pm this evening, and will have until 3:31am to wrap up our sohour.

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CORRECTION- GIZ Egypt won’t provide funding to VC fund managers selected for its recently announced VC University training program, the organization said (pdf) today. We picked up news from other media outlets yesterday that reported that the program will provide EUR 100 mn to the three to four fund managers with the ticket size per fund averaging EUR 25-30 mn each. But in a corrective statement today, GIZ Egypt said that it will provide only technical training and no funding, and is currently working out the small print of the programme, launched in partnership with Endure Capital and Changelabs. The government’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency will act as observers. GIZ will later announce more details on the program and application process.

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PMI figures for April are out tomorrow at 6:15 am CLT. Non-oil private sector conditions worsened for the fourth consecutive month in March, with the gauge dropping to 48 from 49.3 the month before, but optimism reached new highs as the vaccine rollout continues to pick up steam.

???? CIRCLE YOUR CALENDAR-

Africa-based startups have until 26 May to sign up for the French government-sponsored AFD Digital Challenge, an annual startup competition (pdf) by the French Development Agency (AFD). This year, the competition involves startups finding solutions to curb the carbon impact of economic activities or promote sustainable economic activity and the use of natural resources. The 10 winning startups will receive an “acceleration pack,” a package of technical and financial support worth EUR 20k.

The Gouna International Squash Open 2021, a PSA event, will run 20-28 May with 96 men and women competing. The event has the backing of our friends at CIB.

???? FOR YOUR COMMUTE-

Private equity group Apollo has agreed to the USD 5 bn purchase of Yahoo and other Verizon media assets, leaving the latter to shift its focus towards the rollout of 5G networks, according to a Verizon press release. Verizon, which had purchased Yahoo and AOL for USD 9 bn, will retain a 10% stake in the new media company, which will also be called Yahoo. The company said it would focus on expanding its broadband services, after it “achieved lower than expected benefits from the integration of … Yahoo and AOL.” The value of the sale is a bargain compared to the USD 44.6 bn offer from Microsoft that Yahoo refused 15 years ago, as the software giant had then seen Yahoo as its main competitor for software dominance. However, Yahoo’s trailblazing business has dwindled in recent years due to lower audience and a heavy dependence on advertising, writes the FT.

The UAE’s list of “talented” expats being offered citizenship is getting longer: The high-profile list of new UAE citizens includes Sir Tim Clark, president of Dubai’s Emirates airline, Tony Douglas, CEO of Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways, and Michel Salgado, a former Real Madrid footballer, reports the Financial Times. Founders of tech startups have also been deemed talented such as those behind Careem and Souq.com. UAE passport holders can travel around the Gulf states without a visa and acquire property anywhere in the territory. The UAE changed its legislation in January to grant citizenship to foreign residents for the first time in efforts to increase spending in the country and sustain property prices.

BlackRock comes under fire for ‘greenwashing’, again: Rights groups are turning their heads to BlackRock for not openly pressing Indonesian palm oil producer Astra International where BlackRock is the third largest shareholder, over illegal land grab practices and poor environmental standards, the Financial Times reports. BlackRock had joined a chorus of investor protests at P&G in October of last year pressuring the consumer group to clean up its value chain over accusations that Astra subsidiary Astra Agro Lestari was seizing land from local farmers. P&G asked it’s Indonesian supplier to investigate Astra Agro Lestari. BlackRock is the second largest shareholder in P&G, and has minor direct holdings in Astra Agro Lestari.

BlackRock was just called out in March as the second highest “dirty thirty” fund, in a report compiled by 29 NGOs. The report found the 30 largest asset managers held a combined USD 512 bn in coal assets despite committing to the Paris Climate Agreement. In 2020, the world’s largest asset manager was found to have supported only 6% of environmental proposals filed by shareholders, despite CEO Larry Fink’s pledge to put sustainability at the heart of investment strategy and dumping coal assets.

Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek is hoping to take over Arsenal Football Club, with plans to submit a EUR 1.8 bn bid this week to club owner Stan Kroenke, reports Sky Sports’ Kaveh Solhekol (watch, runtime: 04:23). Ek has the support of Arsenal stars Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira. Ek is reportedly a huge Arsenal fan and has an alternative vision for the future of the football club to make it more challenging in the Premier and Champions Leagues. Ek first floated his interest in buying the team on Twitter two weeks ago after plans to create the Super League collapsed. Arsenal’s fans, who have seen the fortunes of the club twindle under Kroenke’s stewardship, have since been protesting for the current club owners to leave.

???? ON THE TUBE TONIGHT-

The latest in action movies: Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse on Amazon Prime. The film is a spin-off of the popular Jack Ryan series and the latest film based on a book by the late writer. Michael B. Jordan plays the character John Kelly, a Navy SEAL who goes rogue after his pregnant wife is murdered in retaliation for his work investigating the Russians. Kelly of course decides to avenge his wife’s death and begins to go after the killers. He finds himself in the middle of a super-convoluted conspiracy that questions his beliefs and leaves him with no one to trust. While this all sounds like the premise of any other action flick, The Washington Post is not a fan, just read the headline to figure that out.

⚽ Chelsea and Real Madrid will battle it out today at 9pm to decide who will face Man City in the final of this year’s Champions League. The tie is finely poised after the sides drew 1-1 in the first leg last week, which was played in Madrid. Man City beat PSG 2-0 in the second leg of the semi-final tie last night, handing them a decisive 4-1 aggregate win.

The Egyptian Premier League has on a few matches tonight at 9:30pm: Ismaily is going up against El Gouna, Ceramica Cleopatra is playing against Al Mokawloon, Aswan is up against Al Masry, and finally, Misr Lel Mekassa and El Gaish will go head-to-head.

???? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

If you haven’t already, add Think and Grow Rich to your bookshelf. Written by Napoleon Hill in 1937, the book was a game changer in how to look at and manage wealth in order to achieve financial freedom. Hill used the stories of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other wealthy entrepreneurs of his time to pull together a series of techniques and principles he called the Law of Success philosophy. While the book’s concepts are still somewhat valid and the piece of literature is still viewed as the “Granddaddy of All Motivational Literature”, a revised version for the 21st century was released. Writer Arthur R. Pell applies the same frameworks of thought to the modern-day success stories of Bill Gates, Mary Kay Ash, and Sir John Templeton and shows that the path to being wealthy hasn’t changed all that much.

???? TOMORROW’S WEATHER- We’re looking at two days of 40°C coming up, with nighttime lows of 22°C on Thursday and 23°C on Friday, our favorite weather app tells us.

Integrated Diagnostics Holding (IDH) is closer to becoming the latest company to list in Egypt after the EGX’s securities registration committee this morning approved its plans to sell 5% of its shares on the Egyptian bourse.

It’s still unclear when the trigger will be pulled on the listing: The listing is pending final approval by the Financial Regulatory Authority, a company source told us. The regulator gave preliminary approval to the listing in March. The company will then be able to make a public disclosure to list, and its shares can then debut five days after this disclosure is made, the EGX said yesterday.

The ticker: Whenever the company debuts, its shares will be traded under the ticker symbol IDHC.CA.

Remember: There won’t be any share subscription because this is a technical listing, which doesn’t involve listing new shares on an exchange. The IDH listing will involve investors owning some 30 mn of the company’s London-listed shares transferring their equity to the EGX.

About the company: IDH is listed on the LSE, and currently has a market cap equivalent to USD 678 mn. It became the first Egyptian health company to IPO in London when it sold 43.5% of its shares in 2015, raising USD 290 mn in an offering that was 11x oversubscribed.

IDH could be the second company to debut on the EGX this year after higher education outfit Taaleem ended an IPO drought that plagued the exchange since before the pandemic struck in early 2020. Another company, cosmeceuticals player Macro Group, was also planning to IPO last month but decided to postpone plans until the fall due to concerns about the market’s capacity to absorb multiple offerings at once.

OTHER IPO NEWS-

Ghazl El Mahalla FC is moving ahead with its EGX listing before the current football season wraps up in October, Public Enterprises Minister Hisham Tawfik told Al Mal. Valuation studies have been completed and are expected to be announced in the coming days, the minister said. Tawfik said earlier this year that the IPO could hit the market during the summer, having previously aimed for a first-quarter offering.

Ghazl El Mahalla is looking to list around two-thirds of its shares on the EGX and raise EGP 100 mn, making it the first publicly traded Egyptian football club. The owner, El Mahalla Spinning and Weaving Company, completed in recent months a restructuring of the club and upgraded its facilities.

An Egyptian logistics player just set a regional record for pre-seed funding: Logistics startup Flextock has closed a USD 3.25 mn pre-seed investment round, just two months after graduating from Y Combinator’s winter batch, according to TechCrunch.

This is the largest ever pre-seed round managed by a MENA startup, and exceeds the USD 3 mn raised by Dayra, a fellow Egyptian startup and Y Combinator graduate, in March.

Who’s in? Egypt-based VC firm Foundation Ventures, Y Combinator, MSA Capital, CRE Ventures, Alter Global, Jameel Investment Management Company (JIMCO), B&Y Ventures Partners, and Access Bridge Ventures have all invested in the company. Flextock also secured angel investment from an undisclosed Sequoia Capital scout, GCC investors, and San Francisco-based customs brokerage company Flexport.

The company is only four months’ old: Flextock was founded last September and launched in January by Mohamed Mossaad (LinkedIn) and Enas Siam (LinkedIn), and helps clients manage e-commerce and fulfillment operations including warehousing, logistics, delivery, and collection. It's currently active only in Egypt and has more than 100 merchants signed up to its platform. The company claims it is growing 25% each week.

Regional ambitions: It is planning to use the funding to strengthen its market presence in Egypt, invest in technology and recruitment, and expand regionally before the end of 2021.

ALSO IN STARTUPLAND-

It’s good to be a nano-lender in Egypt: Egypt’s first nano-lender Kashat has been seeing some growth, with 3k new downloads and adding 2.5k new accounts to its platform in the past month, co-founder Sumair Farooqui told Asharq Business yesterday in an interview (watch, runtime: 6:32). He also touched on the company’s plan to use an alternative algorithm-based credit scoring system to provide credit to unbanked businesses. Kashat, which offers small productive facilities of between EGP 200-1.5k, landed seed investment from Cairo Angels late last month.

Egypt is resurrecting a council responsible for overseeing the country’s exports, according to a presidential decision green-lit today during the weekly cabinet meeting. The body — which will be headed by the president and composed of the prime minister, the central bank governor and several cabinet ministers — will be responsible for increasing the country’s exports, including setting nationwide policies, as well as goals for legislative and administrative reforms supportive of trade and export growth.

Your export subsidies are under new management: The council will also be in charge of keeping tabs on export markets and helping businesses identify potential oversea markets. It will also aim to maximize the benefits Egypt gets from international trade agreements, and oversee the existing export support program.

Structural reform agenda item #1? The decision comes a week after the prime minister announced a new round of economic reforms, a chief objective of which is increasing exports in the manufacturing, telecoms and IT, and agriculture sectors.

Also from today’s cabinet meeting:

The government could soon be turning its focus to overhauling tourist sites in Sharm El Sheikh under a directive from President Abdel Fattah El Sisi to get the Red Sea resort town ready for the return of tourists post-covid. Proposed projects include modernizing facilities in Naama Bay and King Abdullah Street, and improving the city’s security and surveillance infrastructure.

Cabinet approved amendments to the executive regulations of the Public Enterprises Act of 1991. The statement did not specify what the amendments were.

The EGX30 rose 0.5% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 896 mn (29.1% below the 90-day average). Foreign investors were net buyers. The index is down 3.1% YTD.

In the green: Pioneers (+3.3%), Orascom Development (+2.5%) and Oriental Weavers (+1.9%).

In the red: GB Auto (-2.4%), Credit Agricole (-1.6%) and Edita (-1.3%).

MARKET NEWS- B Investments is paying out EGP 200 mn in dividends in 2021, at EGP 1.25 per share, the company said in an EGX disclosure (pdf) this morning.

US regulators could soon begin sinking their teeth into SPACs after Gary Gensler was appointed by the Biden administration to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Times reports. Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which have over the past year generated a USD 142 bn pool of capital and drawn enormous interest from retail investors, institutional powerhouses and celebrities alike, are expected to see increased scrutiny under the SEC’s new head, who built a reputation for being tough on Wall Street in the aftermath of the financial crisis during his time heading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

A dramatic shift? Although we’ve yet to see robust formal investigations of SPACs over the past year — beyond a few SEC inquiries into underwriting activities at Wall Street banks — insiders are expecting this to change with Gensler helming the SEC, with Luke Cadigan, a former prosecutor in the SEC’s enforcement division, telling the salmon-colored paper that the regulatory landscape will “change dramatically in the weeks and months to come.”

No more flimsy revenue projections? Disclosures are expected to become the central focus of regulators who are looking to close gaps that allow companies to make exaggerated claims of future financial performance and facilitate hidden conflicts of interest. Tech start-ups like UK electric vehicle group Arrival and taxi start-up Archer are among the companies that have been advised to make grandiose forward-looking statements of the kind avoided by firms launching traditional IPOs for fear of lawsuits. Under a legal exemption that treats SPAC firms as mergers, companies have been allowed to make revenue projections based on little evidence, and sometimes before any of their products hit the market. Regulators are concerned about the market impact of financial projections that are divorced from the fundamentals and could move to enforce stricter rules on forward looking statements.

And banks might also be in the firing line: Other economists and regulators are demanding more fundamental changes to the regulation of SPACs, lobbying the SEC to make banks that underwrite transactions liable in the same way they are for IPOs. The regulator has been in contact with banks asking for more details on their activities in the SPAC market, sources tell the FT.

The way that the market is currently structured incentivizes poor due diligence, short sellers and market watchers say. Sponsors end up striking bad agreements due to the two-year deadline to find a target and take it public. Rather than spend longer finding stronger companies, the threat of losing in the event of failing to find a target produces weak due diligence, they say. Public excitement for these companies is then drummed up, regardless of their commercial viability. Fears that ordinary investors are being misled about the real prospects of some of these companies has already prompted the acting director of the SEC’s division of corporation finance, John Coates, to issue a warning of heightened scrutiny to come.

SPACs appear to have already begun losing steam with last month being the slowest for SPAC-based IPOs since last June. Less than a dozen companies were listed over a three-week period, down from a five per business day average seen during the first three months of the year. Dwindling retail enthusiasm for SPACs resulting from expectations of a coming crackdown on the public offerings has sent shares in companies like electric truck maker Nikola and battery company QuantumScape down by as much as 80% and has left two thirds of unlisted SPACs trading at less than USD 10 per share. Short sellers are also getting in on what is increasingly looking like a bear market, with the value of short positions taken against SPAC shares tripling to USD 2.7 bn in mid-March.

The creative drought you hit after a brainstorm has a name — and it’s holding you back: The notion that the first ideas are usually the best might be completely wrong. This is according to a new study by Cornell University organizational behaviour professor Brian Lucas, who terms this concept “the creative-cliff phenomenon,” and argues that it is usually perseverance and deep thinking that produces original ideas, the BBC writes.

The creative cliff: This refers to the occasional pattern of diminishing returns some people face when trying to generate ideas. After an initial lightbulb moment, frustration can build, leading to a cliff-edge moment just before you throw in the towel and decide that further effort will only be a waste of time.

Initial idea generation is satisfying, but yields obvious solutions: The first few minutes of quickfire brainstorming are akin to the hit after eating a sweet, says Lucas. But after the simpler and more obvious paths are exhausted, the process slows down.

But more effort is required to connect and develop novel insights: It is only once you exhaust the obvious, that original ideas begin to surface. Sure, the quantity of ideas you produce may decline, but each idea may be of much higher quality. This theory was put to the test in a series of experiments, originally published in PNAS (pdf), where participants were asked to predict their creative output over time for a task, and then complete the actual task. Most participants believed their creativity would drop off rapidly around the halfway mark of the allotted time, but independent judges of the task found that the quality of ideas, as defined by novelty and usefulness, remained stable or even went up.

Be patient, and don’t mistake frustration with depletion: Another experiment found that participants who believed their creativity hit a cap early spent less time on tasks. Participants who rated highly phrases like “people tend to generate their best ideas first,” consequently spent the least time on creative tasks and produced the lowest quality ideas. “Your best ideas will typically take more iterations and more resources than you might initially expect,” Lucas concludes.

12-16 May (Wednesday-Sunday): Eid El Fitr.

16-19 May (Sunday-Wednesday): The Arabian Travel Market (ATM) takes place in Dubai.

26 May (Wednesday): Final day for Africa-based startups to apply for the French government-sponsored AFD Digital Challenge (pdf).

27-29 May (Thursday-Saturday): Informa Markets’ Nextmove real estate exhibition, Cairo International Convention Center, Nasr City.

30 May (Sunday): Al Mal GTM is organizing the fifth edition of the Portfolio Egypt conference under the theme ‘Growth under the weight of the pandemic’.

1 June (Tuesday): The IMF will conduct a second review of targets set under the USD 5.2 bn standby loan approved in June 2020 (proposed date).

7-9 June (Monday-Wednesday): Egypt Petroleum Show, Egypt International Exhibition Center, New Cairo, Egypt.

17 June (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

17-20 June (Thursday-Sunday) : The International Exhibition of Materials and Technologies for Finishing and Construction (Turnkey Expo), Cairo International Conference Center.

24 June (Thursday): End of the 2020-2021 academic year (public schools).

26-29 June (Saturday-Tuesday): The Big 5 Construct Egypt, Cairo International Convention Center, Cairo, Egypt.

30 June (Wednesday): 30 June Revolution Day.

30 June- 15 July: National Book Fair.

July + August: Thanaweya Amma exams take place.

1 July: (Thursday): National holiday in observance of 30 June Revolution.

1 July (Thursday): Large taxpayers that have not yet signed on on to the e-invoicing platform will suffer a host of penalties, including removal from large taxpayer classification, losing access to government services and business, and losing subsidies.

19 July (Monday): Arafat Day (national holiday).

20-23 July (Tuesday-Friday): Eid Al Adha (national holiday)

23 July (Friday): Revolution Day (national holiday).

5 August (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

9 August (Monday): Islamic New Year.

12 August (Thursday): National holiday in observance of the Islamic New Year.

17-20 August (Tuesday-Friday): The World Economic Forum annual meeting, Singapore.

12-15 September (Sunday-Wednesday): Sahara Expo: the 33rd International Agricultural Exhibition for Africa and the Middle East.

16 September (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

30 September-2 October (Thursday-Saturday): Egypt Projects 2021 expo, Egypt International Exhibition Center, Cairo, Egypt.

30 September-8 October (Thursday-Friday): The 54th session of the Cairo International Fair, Cairo International Conference Center, Cairo, Egypt.

1 October (Friday): Expo 2020 Dubai opens.

6 October (Wednesday): Armed Forces Day.

7 October (Thursday): National holiday in observance of Armed Forces Day.

12-14 October (Tuesday-Thursday) Mediterranean Offshore Conference, Alexandria, Egypt

18 October (Monday): Prophet’s Birthday.

21 October (Thursday): National holiday in observance of the Prophet’s Birthday.

28 October (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

1-3 November (Monday-Wednesday): Egypt Energy exhibition on power and renewable energy, Egypt International Exhibition Center, Cairo, Egypt

1-12 November (Monday-Friday): 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), Glasgow, United Kingdom.

29 November-2 December (Monday-Thursday): Egypt Defense Expo

13-17 December: United Nations Convention against Corruption, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

16 December (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

May 2022: Investment in Logistics Conference, Cairo, Egypt.

27 June-3 July 2022 (Monday-Sunday): World University Squash Championships, New Giza.

**Note to readers: Some national holidays may appear twice above. Since 2020, Egypt has observed most mid-week holidays on Thursdays regardless of the day on which they fall and may also move those days to Sundays. We distinguish below between the actual holiday and its observance.