PM — Let’s go, Atlas Lions

Good afternoon, friends, and happy almost-THURSDAY. That end-of-year rush is in full gear here at home and it doesn’t look like it will be letting up for the next few days.

THE BIG STORY TODAY

FinMin proposes new top rate for income tax: The Finance Ministry has submitted amendments to the Income Tax Act that would enforce a 27.5% income tax on individuals earning more than EGP 800k a year, as it looks to alleviate the tax burden of low-income earners, a source with knowledge of the matter told Enterprise. The amendments have been sent to the House of Representatives for discussion, our source told us.

THE BIG STORY ABROAD

It’s a toss-up between the ongoing FTX saga and the monetary policy guessing game: Picking up where we left off this morning, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal’s front pages are still focused primarily on the charges brought against FTX’s former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. Others in the international business press — including Bloomberg and CNBC — are more concerned this afternoon with monetary policy decisions expected to come out of the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. The Fed is broadly expected to soften the pace of its interest rate hikes when it wraps up its Federal Open Market Committee meeting later today — a policy lead the ECB is expected to follow when it meets tomorrow.

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

• South Africa’s Vodacom now owns the lion’s share of Vodafone Egypt: Vodafone Group has transferred its 55% stake in its Egyptian unit to its South African subsidiary Vodacom in a EUR 2.37 bn cash and stock transaction.
• Appetito + Jumlaty tie up: Cairo-based grocery delivery startup Appetito and Saudi Arabia’s Jumlaty have merged to form a new company called Nomu in what they say is a bid to become the region’s leading food-tech supply chain platform.
• Agriculture is Egypt’s gold mine, says Cayesh’s Mahmoud Hassan: After reading our five-step recipe for turning Egypt into a global export hub and FDI magnet, Cayesh co-founder Mahmoud Hassan tells us why he thinks agriculture is one of the primary industries where we have a competitive advantage.

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PSA- Two days until the e-invoicing deadline: Companies have until Thursday to register with the Tax Authority’s e-invoicing system. Only 150k companies had signed up to the new system ahead of the previous deadline of 15 December, according to the Tax Authority’s most recent tally at the end of November, which is well below a sought goal of 1 mn companies to register under the system.

REMEMBER- This deadline no longer applies to the self-employed: The Finance Ministry pushed the deadline for self-employed professionals — including doctors, pharmacists and lawyers — to 30 April 2023 after widespread opposition to the system.

Check out our full calendar on the web for a comprehensive listing of upcoming news events, national holidays and news triggers.

☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- Expect a daytime high of 25°C tomorrow and a nighttime low of 14°C, according to our favorite weather app.

A small change to FTX’s code allowed the company to defraud investors: Fallen crypto exchange FTX saw a tweak in its code in 2020 that allowed a hedge fund owned by former CEO and so-called “crypto king” Sam Bankman-Fried to borrow an unlimited amount of FTX funds, Reuters reports after reviewing the platform’s code base. The code change allowed SBF’s Alameda hedge fund (not to be confused with Alameda Healthcare) to borrow as many funds from FTX as it wants without automatically selling its collateral assets as it does with other customers, giving it a “virtually unlimited line of credit,” the US Securities and Exchange Commission wrote in its complaint. The funds were sourced from bank accounts secretly controlled by Alameda that received over USD 8 bn in deposits from FTX clients, the complaint said.

Alameda’s account had other special features that allowed it to book orders a fraction of a second faster than others, which in a “high-frequency trading sector,” is a significant time advantage, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in its statement (pdf).

Musk is no longer the world’s richest person: Tech b’naire Elon Musk’s spot as the world’s richest person was overtaken by Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of fashion giant LVMH, Bloomberg reported. Musk, whose fortune was once estimated at USD 340 bn, saw his wealth drop by over USD 100 bn since the start of the year to USD 163.1 bn, partly due to his controversial USD 44 bn acquisition of Twitter. Arnault’s fortune is estimated at USD 170.6 bn.

Golden Globe nominations are out: Tragicomedy firm The Banshees of Inisherin led Golden Globe nominations for 2023 with eight nominations with sci-fi fable Everything Everywhere All at Once coming second with six nominations. There were five nods each for Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, Babylon, and Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. Catch the full list of nominations here. The award show is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, 11 January.

WhatsApp could walk away from the UK over proposed law: WhatsApp is threatening to shut down the messaging app in the UK if the British parliament passes proposed anti-encryption laws, Meta’s head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart told The Telegraph. The proposed law would require “communication providers to take away end-to-end encryption,” a key feature of WhatsApp’s messaging platform, Cathcart said. “The hard reality is we offer a global product. It would be a very hard decision for us to make a change where 100% of our users lower their security.”

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Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a dark and gloomy adaptation of the children's novel set in Mussolini-era Italy. In this remarkable stop-motion musical version, set sometime between the first and second world wars, Gepetto — a toymaker deeply grieving the loss of his son who died in a church bombing — carves a puppet that eerily resembles him. When the wooden puppet comes to life, he is oblivious to just how peculiar his ability to walk and talk is and how strange it is that Pinocchio and Sebastian, the talking cricket (played by Ewan McGregor), start going out into the world and exploring. The story takes a turn when Pinocchio is kidnapped from school and convinced to join a traveling circus and then taken to a fascist training camp. While not exactly for kids, this fantasy-horror version is definitely the only one of the three Pinochio versions released in 2022 worth watching. If you’re taken by the stop motion, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio: Handcarved Cinema takes you behind the scenes, diving into animation techniques and the making of the movie.

⚽ The second round of the World Cup semi-finals kicks off tonight with the highly anticipated Morocco v France match at 9pm. The winner of tonight’s match qualifies for the World Cup final against Argentina, while the loser will play against Croatia to determine the third and fourth places.

France is a wagering favorite against Morocco, while Morocco is in the hearts of Arabs, Africans, and all those rooting for the dark horse.The Atlas Lions have relied on their impenetrable defense, which has only allowed one goal to permeate it throughout the championship, thanks to a mistake on Moroccan defender Nayef Akrad’s part. As for the French, they have a strong offense and have scored 11 goals so far, but their defense has conceded a goal in every game and they were defeated by Tunisia at the end of the group stage.

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Singer, songwriter and composer Rania Shalaan takes the stage at Room Art Space tonight at 9pm.

Get ready for a night of standup comedy followed by football at Chez Nou Villa: Comedians Pola Samuel, Gamal Ramzy, Walid Khairy serve up their funniest punchlines starting at 7pm before the screening of the Morocco v France match.

Mawawil will deliver oral proverbs then Indie-pop band Wust El Balad perform tonight at Cairo Jazz Club 610 at 9pm.

Don’t miss the Christmas Concerts, directed by Hisham El Tally at the Cairo Opera house tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm. The Cairo Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mohamed Saad Basha the Cairo Opera Company, A Cappella Choir, directed by Ahmed El Saedi and the Cairo Opera Ballet Company make up the concert.

The Sound and Light Show at the Pyramids narrates the history of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure at 7pm.

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2 A.M. in Little America imagines a future where Americans are forced to flee the US and become unwelcome refugees. In Ken Kalfus’ imagined future, the second American civil war has already taken place and Americans have become the new biggest group of refugees forced to seek shelter beyond US borders. US refugees living in an unnamed nation at the start of the book take on low-wage jobs and are exploited and looked down upon by the locals. Among them is Ron Patterson, who is forced to relocate when that country enforces stricter immigration laws. He eventually ends up in another country, where an “enclave” of Americans, dubbed “Little America” has been set up. There, rival militias of American refugees are determined to carry on their domestic conflict abroad and we hear about the horrors both sides of the war perpetrated at home — which are very familiar to the crimes committed by the US and its allies across the world, namely the atrocities at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

The EGX30 rose 1.5% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 3.86 bn (167% above the 90-day average). Local investors were net buyers. The index is up 28.7% YTD.

In the green: GB Auto (+9.6%), Ezz Steel (+6.9%) and Oriental Weavers (+6.6%).

In the red: Eastern Company (-4.0%), Sidi Kerir Petrochemicals (-3.0%) and Abu Qir Fertilizers (-2.6%).

Audacious, full of wit, inclusive, and empowering: That’s the Pantone Color Institute’s (PCI) description of Viva Magenta, 2023’s Color of the Year. Generated by a data-fed AI program fuelled by PCI’s color anthologists’ trend analysis, the pinkish-purplish-reddish tone is “an unconventional shade for an unconventional time.” The color reflects the state of global culture at a given moment in time — a color through which to represent and express what society is looking for, according to PCI Vice President Laurie Pressman.

Interestingly, it’s an entirely fabricated color: As a color magenta does not exist on its own, it’s made up of a natural fading of red and purple that the brain averages out — and in Viva Magenta’s case it was AI-created as PCIs creatives were unable to find the perfect shade. But Viva Magenta is a departure from the course. Artist and author of Chromophobia, David Batechlor, notes a history of western aversion to bright colors, which are seen to be primitive or infantile, as well as riskier choices during times of recession, reports Business Insider. Apple has long accommodated these tendencies, manufacturing an aesthetic of cool, metallic colors and materials all with clean lines. Goethe, who believed that lurid and garish colors were for children and animals while muted tones were for sophisticated adults, would have approved.

The psychology of color: Color can link emotion to human behavior, as Johann Goethe’s Theory of Colors first explored, linking the way colors can impact and express human emotions, behaviors and character traits: Red, Goethe wrote, is beautiful, rational and imaginative, while green is useful, intellectual and sensual. Psychologist Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotion took this further, connecting the development of the strength of an emotion to the intensity of a color shade — a light sky blue might suggest pensiveness, but dark navy indicates grief.

But can a color capture a global zeitgeist? Looking at Viva Magenta, its hot pinkish-purplish tones evoke urgency, playfulness and rebellion — and it’s glaringly unavoidable. Sat somewhere between blue and red on the color wheel, it is a hybrid that withstands boxes. Is it compromising then, asks the New York Times, or politically optimistic? Does its name, Viva Magenta, or the immersive exhibition that accompanied its reveal, “the Magentaverse,” nod to Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse? Or are we to draw parallels between the birth of magenta — named after 1859s Battle of Magenta when the color was worn in a symbol of support of Italy’s fight for independence — and the creation of Viva Magenta in a year which has witnessed Ukraine’s war against Russia?

Selling potential: Viva Magenta does not just represent a (potentially generalized) global desire for upheaval. It is also here to sell. A 2006 study, The Impact of Color in Marketing, found that 90% of customers’ product decisions are based on color alone. These findings echo Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s claim that “colors are the mother tongue of the subconscious.” And colors on the red end of the color scale have been proven to instigate impulsive purchases. It’s no surprise that the team behind PCI’s Color of the Year, Pressman and Leatrice Eiseman, are two students of color psychology.

The Viva Magenta Brand: Already the face of two brand agreements (Motorola and Cariuma) and a host of products (mugs, key chains, postcards), the choice of Viva Magenta has clear ties to its ability to influence global marketing and branding strategies — as does the foundation of the Color of the Year. Look carefully and you can already see the color’s selling power. On Instagram interior design profiles, the vibrancy of Viva Magenta stands out in polar opposite to the current proliferation of Elephant’s Breath painted walls, a warm mid-gray color produced by Farrow and Ball, that has also been referred to as “greige.” While greige is an “unambitious, anodyne aesthetic,” as Batchelor wrote in the Guardian, the vivacity of Viva Magenta is inescapable and has a clear ability to catch the eye and sell. The NYT pinpoints TikTok’s “follow” and “upload” buttons — which are both a Viva Magenta Color — while celebrities like Lewis Hamilton, Kate Middleton and Harry Styles have all been spotted decked out in VM shades.