PM — Public Enterprises Ministry talks over EV assembly with Dongfeng have collapsed and it is looking for a new partner.

We’ve come to the end of one busy week, ladies and gentlemen, where a number of major M&As, potential IPOs, major regulatory changes to the EGX and more are keeping us busy. Tomorrow is also the final day of COP26 where Egypt signed on to a number of climate change agreements and targets. Before we close out the week with today’s main headlines, we have updates…

MARKET WATCH- The market appears to have taken kindly to the package of EGX tax cuts and fee reductions the Madbouly cabinet rolled out yesterday, closing the trading day today up 0.8% after a mixed week. The EGX30 is now up 6.7% YTD.

What’s in the package, again? The new measures were unveiled in a bid to encourage trading on the bourse ahead of the introduction of the (so far not-popular) capital gains tax on resident investors at the beginning of next year. Investors are set to pay reduced trading and clearance fees, all of which will be tax-deductible, while taxes on share swap transactions will be slashed by more than half and new measures will be put in place to mitigate the tax implications of capital increases, among a raft of other incentives.

Further afield, Anghami now has until 11 February, 2022 to pull the trigger on its merger with blank-check firm Vistas Media Acquisition Company and list on the Nasdaq, after Vistas’ sponsor made a USD 1 mn extension payment, according to an SEC filing. This is the second time the streaming platform’s SPAC merger deadline has been extended, after the company previously pushed the deadline from August.

Tuk-tuk parts import ban is now the law of the land: The import ban on basic components for the local assembly of tuk-tuks came into effect today, as Trade Minister Nevine Gamea’s decision was published in the Official Gazette (pdf). Local auto player GB Auto, whose larger motorcycles and three-wheelers segment made up roughly 16% of its revenue, told us that they have seen the writing on the wall and are actively exploring alternatives. You can catch the highlights of what they told us here.

THE BIG STORIES TODAY

Our EV assembly plans with Dongfeng just hit a wall: Talks with China’s Dongfeng to locally assemble its E70 electric vehicles have come to a halt due to an import pricing dispute with the automaker, as per a Public Enterprises Ministry statement (pdf) today. State-owned El Nasr Automotive had signed an agreement with Dongfeng in January to locally assemble electric vehicles in El Nasr’s factory through one of the Chinese group’s subsidiaries. Dongfeng and El Nasr were unable to agree on a suitable price point for imported materials, causing negotiations to falter, the ministry said.

El Nasr is currently seeking out another partner for the project, and is expected to reach a decision before the end of November, the statement says.

Another EV missed chance? Egypt did not sign on to a new COP26 agreement between 24 governments and leading car manufacturers committing them to selling only zero-emission new vehicles by 2040 “or earlier.” Some of the world’s largest auto players and biggest markets were also strikingly absent from the agreement, notes the FT. These include China, the US and Germany, and four out of the five largest global carmakers — Volkswagen, Toyota, the Renault-Nissan alliance, and Hyundai-Kia.

Our regional auto rivals, including Morocco and Turkey, were among the nine EMs committed to accelerating the adoption of zero-emission vehicles. Just saying, it’s not a good look.

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Naguib Sawiris is having a press field day, talking about everything from his outlook on Egypt’s gold prospects and “green” mining to BTC, Ora Developers’ expansion and a possible exit from Euronews. Key takeaways so far: Sawiris is looking to diversify his La Mancha gold fund to also look at battery materials (such as nickel and lithium), run his gold concession sites on solar energy and set Ora Developers on a USD 1 bn path to expand in Africa.

^^ We’ll have these stories and more in Sunday’s edition of EnterpriseAM.

HAPPENING NOW- President Abdel Fattah El Sisi is in Paris ahead of tomorrow’s conference on Libya, where he’s set to chat with French President Emmanuel Macron, according to an Ittihadiya statement. The UN-sponsored conference will be paving way for Libya’s planned elections on December 24. El Sisi spoke with the chair of Libya’s presidential council Mohamed El Menfi earlier this week ahead of the conference, which is meant to lay the groundwork for next month’s crucial presidential elections. El Sisi is also scheduled to hold meetings with senior French officials to discuss economic, commercial, investment and security cooperation, says the statement.

OBITUARY– Iconic Egyptian painter Gazbia Sirry died last night at the age of 96. Sirry, who was a professor at Helwan University’s Faculty of Arts and at AUC, led a 50-year career in art that was featured paintings characterized by strong female unity, polygamy and fertility and the reproductive power of women.

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

• Saudi’s Brmaja could debut on the EGX as it eyes a new home base in Cairo: Saudi tech firm Brmaja is looking to list 20% of its shares on the EGX next March, as part of its plan to go through a series of acquisitions that will make Egypt its central hub before the end of 1H2022.
• Annual inflation cools from 20-month high: Annual urban inflation fell back from its 20-month high to 6.3% in October as the rate of increase in food prices dipped from the month prior.
• More sectors angling for private sector minimum wage exemption: Business leaders want to exempt companies in eight more sectors from complying with the new private sector minimum wage, which will take effect at the beginning of 2022.

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THE BIG STORY ABROAD- Topping headlines abroad today is the story of migrants stranded on the Polish-Belarus border clashing with Polish border guards overnight, reports Reuters. The EU, which had already imposed sanctions on Russian-backed Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko in response to his crackdown on protests, has threatened additional sanctions against Belarus in response to the latest outbreak of violence at the border.

OVER TO COP26- In a surprise turnaround, China and the US have agreed to increase climate collaboration, reduce emissions and better meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, climate envoys Xie Zhenhua and John Kerry announced at COP26 news conferences yesterday. China also committed for the first time to reduce the greenhouse gas methane. With tensions having recently ratcheted up between the two countries on issues like trade and human rights, this new agreement marks a major step forward, says AP, quoting an expert on US-China climate talks.

As usual, the joint agreement was short on specifics — with no timeframe given from China on when it would bring down emissions or phase out coal, the New York Times notes.

How credible are all the COP26 “net zero” plans, really? Private sector buy-in is crucial to cut emissions and reduce global heating, leaders have reiterated at COP26. But critics — including environmental activists and regulators — tell the Financial Times that many companies’ emission-cutting pledges won’t force the drastic, immediate behavior change or accountability needed to actually avert climate disaster.

Corporate greenwashing can actually reduce government momentum to enact badly-needed policy interventions. For both business and political leaders in Glasgow, “their main goal at COP is to emerge as undisrupted as possible,” says alternative protein start-up Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown. And in some cases, big business is actively engaged in lobbying for causes that undermine the climate action they claim to want to see, says Austin Whitman, CEO of Climate Neutral, a NGO that helps brands cut their emissions.

Tomorrow is the final day of the marathon COP26 summit.

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The two-day Africa Fintech summit kicks off next Tuesday, 16 November. The summit looks at innovation in the fintech ecosystem, venture capital and other forms of investing, and will also discuss the rise of healthtech.

Calling all Egyptian entrepreneurs aged 23-35: You have exactly two weeks to apply for the acceleration exchange program Meet Silicon Valley for a chance to travel to California for a 10-day program to meet with tech executives and investors. The program is being implemented by Injaz Egypt and TechWadi with the support of the US Embassy in Egypt, and the deadline for applications is 23 November.

☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- We’re looking at a comfortably warm weekend, with a daytime high of 25°C and nighttime low of 17°C tomorrow. The mercury will inch back up to 28°C on a sunny Saturday before cooling off to 18°C in the evening, our favorite weather app tells us.

The Eternals isn’t coming to Egypt just yet: The latest Marvel movie didn’t hit cinemas yesterday as was originally planned, according to a brief statement from IMAX Egypt. The Eternals stirred up controversy because it includes LGBTQ+ content, including a same-gender kiss scene (the first in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Disney refused requests from the MENA region to edit out the scene, leading the movie to get banned altogether in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, according to the Guardian. IMAX’s statement doesn’t say when the movie will begin showing in cinemas here at home.

Elon Musk actually sold USD 5 bn of Tesla stock, (kind of) because Twitter told him to. The b’naire CEO sold 4.5 mn shares or around 3% of his total holdings in the automaker, Reuters reported. This is Musk’s first sale since 2016 and it comes days after he set up a Twitter poll asking if he should sell 10% of his shares in the automaker. Over half the respondents voted yes, prompting Tesla’s shares to fall by around 16% before regaining some ground yesterday. However, regulatory filings show that the sale of about a fifth of the shares was made based on a pre-arranged trading plan set up in September, weeks before his social media post. Tesla, the world’s most valuable car maker, is up more than 51% this year.

Can satellite imaging save the planet? Google Earth and Google Maps’ lesser known cousin Earth Engine makes it possible for scientists to identify water sources and figure out where to plant trees by allowing them to monitor things like deforestation in real time, writes Bloomberg. The platform can gather information such as soil composition and water vapor rising from farmlands, and allows users to draw their own interactive maps, with 20k dynamic images added to its collection daily. The Engine, which is currently launching its corporate product, allows clients like Unilever to deliver on their promise of ensuring that palm oil isn’t being produced at the expense of illegal logging of tropical forests. It also allows flood mapping platforms like Cloud to Street to monitor and predict the intensity, duration and impact of flooding in flood-prone regions of Africa, as well as to gauge water use in arid regions in the American west.

???? ON THE TUBE TONIGHT-

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Race and assimilation are powerfully explored with Passing. This adaptation of a 1929 novel of the same name tells the story of two light-skinned black women in the 1920s, one of whom has been living a double life and “passing” as white. After a chance encounter reunites the childhood friends, the white-passing woman begins to ingratiate herself in her Black friend’s social circle, upending both women’s carefully constructed personas. The mellow and somber film is shot, aptly, in black and white, flattening out difference in skin tone, and offering an aesthetic reflection of the film’s tagline; that nothing — whether a person’s motives, their virtue, or their personal truth — is ever really either black or white.

⚽World Cup qualifiers are heating up tonight, with Greece and Spain going head to head and the Republic of Ireland facing off with Portugal, while Germany faces Liechtenstein. All three matches are at 9:45pm.

Tomorrow, keep an eye on Egypt’s World Cup qualifier against Angola at 9pm. Over in the South American qualifiers, there’s Uruguay v. Argentina at 1am and Brazil v. Colombia at 2:30am — way past our bedtimes, but definitely worth staying up for.

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You haven’t had a complete culinary experience if you haven’t dined in a botanical haven like Blooms and Beans. This little nook in Sheikh Zayed’s Arkan Plaza has founders who are equal parts plant enthusiasts and fast-food lovers (as their Instagram bio claims), meaning it offers breakfast, brunch and dinner, with a variety of Italian dishes, occasionally infused with Mediterranean flavors. We loved their Pasta E Broccoli, the mushroom fillet, and the chocolate pistachio tart — not to mention their freshly brewed coffee — and their collection of unique, luscious plants really stole our heart.

???? OUT AND ABOUT-

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It’s Arkan Art Week: Artwork from more than 50 artists are on display at Arkan Art Week, which brings together fine art pieces from galleries such as ZagPick Gallery and ArtsHub with a photography exhibition from Gyptian. The art week runs until next Wednesday, 17 November every day until midnight.

Electronic night at Cairo Jazz Sheikh Zayed: Dutch DJ Colyn and Copenhagen-based DJ Denis Horvat are hitting the decks at Cairo Jazz Club 610 tonight in the latest edition of the club’s Impulse nights. Homegrown talent Aly Goede will perform the opening set. The event is scheduled to start at 8pm, but make sure you get a reservation ahead of time.

???? EARS TO THE GROUND-

History nerds, this one’s for you: Paul Cooper’s Fall of Civilizations will take you on a deep-dive into what made great civilizations rise to power … then collapse into ruin. From China’s Han Dynasty to Africa’s Songhai Empire, from the end of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean to the crumbling of the ancient Angkor civilization in modern-day Cambodia, this podcast series spans geographical settings and time periods. What interests writer, producer and narrator Paul Cooper is how the world’s most sophisticated and powerful civilizations used their technological expertise, trade prospects, courage or good fortune to build thriving, culturally-rich societies — and how the tide then turned to bring them crashing down.

In many ways, each episode is an epic poem in itself — often over three hours long, usually recorded in one take, and peppered with music and recitations of ancient poetry. Cooper deliberately avoids a sensationalist approach to his storytelling. You’ll find no lingering on the exploits of lascivious kings or details of gruesome rituals (this is not The Tudors). Instead, Cooper draws on his PhD in the cultural and literary significance of ruins to help listeners enter the lives of citizens of these great civilizations — what mattered to them, and how they lived. What brings these empires to their knees often begins as a combination of bad luck and isolated poor judgements by powerful individuals, the podcast shows.

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Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller: Diwan’s origin story. Many of us might struggle to remember a time before Diwan was a household name and our go-to for books in English, French and German, as well as Arabic. Nadia Wassef’s recently-released memoir, Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller, takes us through the bookstore’s 2002 founding and subsequent growth — a process spearheaded by three women with no prior experience of running a business, or bookselling: Wassef, her sister Hind, and their friend Nihal.

A tale of modern Egypt: Wassef’s writing is lighthearted and anecdotal in tone — particularly as she recounts some of the more comical incidents the trio encountered trying to get “Egypt’s first modern bookstore” off the ground, including disgruntled customers and a countrywide lack of ISBN numbers. But threaded through it all is astute social commentary on the class and gender-based, religious, cultural, and political fissures that would become so instrumental in the events of 2011 and beyond. Simultaneously a love letter to reading, a run-down of recent historical and cultural trends, and a humorous take on the challenges of starting a business, this is an engaging read for anyone interested in the origins of a homegrown Egyptian company that’s become a national icon.

The EGX30 rose 0.8% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 894.7 mn (39.9% below the 90-day average). Foreign investors were net buyers. The index is up 6.7% YTD.

In the green: Medinet Nasr Housing (+11.6%), Heliopolis Housing (+5.6%) and Aspire Capital (+5.1%).

In the red: Speed Medical (-2.6%), GB Auto (-1.5%) and Abou Kir Fertilizers (-0.7%).