Pharaohs win 2-1, are World Cup-bound for the first time since 1990

On a day on which we’d prefer to bask in the afterglow of football, an influential US senator iswarning we should all be worried about the prospect of World War III thanks to The Donald. Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the New York Times in an interview yesterday that “President Trump was treating his office like ‘a reality show,’ with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation ‘on the path to World War III.’”

(The interview came after Corker and US President Donald Trump exchanged taunts on Twitter, with Corker penning a line we wish we had written: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”)

The House of Representatives is expected to discuss the Industrial Development Authority Act in a plenary session today. The Industry Committee signed off on the bill on Saturday, and the legislation is expected to give the IDA more autonomy, separating its budget and accounts from the Trade and Industry Ministry’s, and granting it authority to sell land without government approval. The 37-article law will introduce the IDA to the “one stop shop” policy (ugh), in theory to facilitate processes such as applying for industrial permits.

The 2017 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will be announced today. Guessing the victor is notoriously difficult because of the diverse branches of the discipline, Cass Sunstein writes. He suggests that the leading candidates for this year’s economics Nobel are Esther Duflo, Richard Posner, William Nordhaus, W. Kip Viscusi, and Richard H. Thaler. We are rooting for Duflo since we are big fans of her work on poverty and development economics and her book Poor Economics. If she succeeds, she would be only the second woman to take home the prize.

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Are you prepared to survive the data apocalypse? The dangers of lax cyber security do not need to be elaborated on. But when the lethal WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware attacks were launched earlier in the year, it did seem like a data apocalypse had come to pass. The attack hit nearly 100 countries and some of the world’s largest organizations, prompting both the private sector and government organizations — including our ICT Ministry and the central bank — to take extensive protection measures. The attacks brought into the forefront how the cyber security is imperative to the survival of organizations and a top national security priority. According to Information Security Buzz, key takeaways from the attack was that no organization is immune from security breaches; there is no silver bullet for protection; and most crucially, paying attention to security fundamentals is paramount. They also conclude that organizations paying attention to security maintenance could make a huge difference.

Where would you start? Global CyberSecurity firm Trend Micro is running a special survey of Enterprise readers to dig into whether companies are being targeted by ransomware and if they are prepared to fight it. The survey will also analyze the impact of ransomware attacks on both direct monetary cost (such as the ransom your company would pay to a hacker) or the indirect cost of employee downtime. You’ll learn a lot in the two minutes you’ll spend taking it, whether you’re a CEO or a CTO.
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When you’re done taking the survey, go visit the hive mind of Google and learn more about their Pixel 2. As good iSheep, we’re still holding out for the iPhone X, but Google’s offering this year looks even more compelling than the Pixel last year, which we enjoyed very much. Google’s Pixel 2 page is here, and the Verge has a take here.

Also for geeks this morning: The global business press isn’t going to help you make up your mind before you go watch Blade Runner 2049. The Financial Time calls it a film full of “big ideas” and “stupendous spectacle,” crowning it an “astoundingly good film.” The Wall Street Journal counters that it “short of expectations” at the box office despite good reviews. The follow-up to the 1982 classic was still the top film last week at the US box office.

** Did you miss yesterday’s issue? We publish without exception Sunday-Thursday before 7am (though we’ll confess to taking national holidays and occasional “Enterprise days off”). We failed to reach a number of you yesterday because the algorithms that decide whether we make it to your inbox took umbrage at something we had written. If ever we’re not in your inbox, check other tabs or just hop over to our website, which we update every morning as soon as we dispatch that day’s issue.

A large Egyptian delegation will start trickling into Washington, DC, today and tomorrow for the IMF and World Bank annual fall meetings. The gatherings kick off today and run until 15 October. Among those attending are Investment Minister Sahar Nasr, Finance Minister Amr El Garhy, EGX chief Mohamed Farid and Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority Chairman Mohamed Omran. Garhy and Nasr will also be courting investors on the sidelines of the meeting and in a separate event in Washington, DC.

The annual meetings come ahead of a scheduled visit to Egypt from an IMF delegation later this month to conduct a second review of the state’s reform program.

EFG Hermes will hold its 7th Annual London Conference on 6-9 November, with an expanded roster of some 405 companies and institutions invited to attend. The conference will also include representatives, C-suite executives and investors from companies outside the MENA region, including Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The event will be held at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.

The euphoria from the Pharaohs’ success in qualifying for the 2018 World Cup permeated the airwaves last night, as the talking heads promptly ignored anything and everything else that could have possibly been going on in the country (which really wasn’t much).

A tearful Lamees Al Hadidi brought a taste of street celebrations into the Hona Al Asema studio, complete with a huge flag and horns (watch, runtime 2:48). National team member Amr Gamal, who was subbed-in during the last 10 minutes of the match, told Lamees that the entire team felt immensely pressured while playing. The host also aired footage of celebrations around the world, including in Saudi Arabia and New York (watch, runtime 2:04).

Kol Youm’s Amr Adib, meanwhile, actually brought the street into the studio. Surrounded by a crowd of rowdy football fans, Adib bobbed and shook his head in what we think was a celebratory dance as he — quite literally — screamed out supportive chants for each team player individually (watch, runtime 8:20).

To talk about the game, Adib brought in veteran player Magdy Abdel Ghany, who tooted his own horn for having once played in the World Cup (back in 1990) and also getting to attend the tournament as a member of the Egyptian Football Association Board (watch, runtime 3:06).

Over on Masaa DMC, sports analyst Hassan El Mestekawy told host Eman El Hosary that the national team should begin now to mentally and physically prep for the championship by playing friendly matches with rival teams (watch, runtime 5:54).

Meanwhile on Yahduth fi Masr, former interim president Adly Mansour told Sherif Amer that he was particularly happy to see how both full and orderly the stadium in Borg El Arab was during the game.

For the first time in nearly three decades, we’re going to the World Cup. In case you were in a coma last night and didn’t catch what was possibly the most stress-inducing match in modern Egyptian history, we qualified for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which is being played next year in Russia. The Pharaohs beat Congo 2-1 in extra time, making it the first time the national team has qualified for the cup since 1990 (which, incidentally, is before the birth of at least one of us here at Enterprise, which is making the editor feel rather old this morning).

The Pharaohs had 12 players on the field last night, but we might as well have only putnational treasure Mohamed Salah on the roster. Salah, who is currently with Liverpool FC, gave us two beautiful goals sent Egypt to Russia, scoring at the 63-minute mark. Congo’s Arnold Bouka-Moutou managed to get the ball past goalie Essam El Hadary minutes before the final whistle, but our saving grace was a penalty kick earned by Trezeguet in the third minute of stoppage time, which Salah deftly put straight in the net.

Watch all three goals here (runtime 6:02) or go enjoy wall-to-wall coverage from our friends at King Fut.

The Pharaohs will still be playing Ghana next month, Goal reminds us, but the match is merely a technical requirement and will not affect Egypt’s berth in the World Cup.

Salah’s success in breaking Egypt’s 28-year-old curse “unleashed joy across asoccer-mad country of nearly 100 mn people used to bitter disappointment when trying to qualify for the world’s top soccer tournament,” the Associated Press says. The pressure to win the match reportedly pushed Argentine coach Hector Cuper to take blood pressure medication, according to the BBC.

Egypt’s victory came as Poland also secured itself a spot in the 2018 contest, the Guardian notes.

Hundreds of Egyptians will be flocking to Moscow for the championship. We wonder, though: Is that enough for Russia to lift the ban on direct flights to Cairo?

There’s nothing left for corporate Egypt to do but band together and unleash its combined sense of humor on the Consumer Protection Authority. The CPA has figured out a way to lower the bar on overzealous censorship even further after banning a benign ad by Juhayna (watch, runtime: 1:59) in support of the national team for being “too depressing.” Anything short of a conclave of civil servants on antidepressants is too much for the crack investigators at the CPA. The ad tells the story of Mabrouk, an Egyptian football fan born after Egypt’s last World Cup entry in 1990. Mabrouk suffers repeated psychological trauma after Egypt’s every failure to qualify and is now in a near-catatonic state. The only way to prevent his imminent death would be for Egypt to qualify. Atef “Smiley-face” Yakoub appears to view the ad as insensitive to people suffering from those symptoms. So how about every ad for the next Black / White Friday in November be humorous?

You want depressing? We give you the Suez Canal’s battle with Panama. The Suez Canal posted tepid growth of about 2.2% in the first nine months of this year, the latest in a string of figures that have disappointed some analysts since the opening of the “New” Suez Canal. Breezy throwaway lines about slow growth somehow being linked to a slowdown in global trade post the global financial crisis tell only part of the story, the Wall Street Journal suggests, declaring that some “ocean operators [are] switching sailings from Suez as bigger ships can cross new Panama locks to reach the U.S. East Coast.” Tonnage at the Panama Canal is up 23% since the start of this year after a nine-year, USD 5.4 bn expansion program that has made it possible for ships 3x larger than before to transit.

From 53k containers a week before the expansion, the Panama Canal handled 58k containers in September, the Journal says, and “much of the increase was from ship diversions from the Suez in Egypt, where weekly capacity from Asia to the U.S. East Coast fell by nearly 18% in September since the [Panama] locks opened to about 30,400 containers.”

Another major source of FX for Egypt is doing better: Egyptian expatriates sent home 40% more money in August 2017 compared to August 2016, the central bank said, as reported by Reuters. Overall, remittances recorded USD 16.3 bn from November 2016 to August, up 17.3% compared to the similar period a year earlier.

Leases on retail space at malls may be subject to value-added tax: Reports have begun swirling that the Finance Ministry will declare that retail space at malls is to be subject to the value-added tax (VAT) a move that Al Borsa says is upsetting real estate developers, who have in recent years been looking at retail space as a source of recurring revenue. The Tax Authority has “suggested” that it will impose VAT on commercial space rental, which Tarek Shoukry, head of the real estate developers division of the Federation of Egyptian Industries, claims would violate the act that created the VAT. A source from the Tax Authority tells the newspaper that the law does not exempt stores in malls from a 14% VAT. The source reportedly confirmed that the authority had sent notices to real estate firms that stores at malls will be taxed.

Do you own property in West Cairo? Property values could be on the verge of going up. The Civil Aviation Ministry will soon begin launching flights from the West Cairo International Airport (otherwise known as the Sphinx International Airport), Al Borsa reports. Most of the work on the facility has been completed and the official launch date expected to be announced by the Defense Ministry or Ittihadiya, said sources. The airport, which will be able to handle around 300 passengers an hour at first, will kick off operations with domestic flights only, the newspaper claims.

Legislative would give top anti-corruption watchdog full autonomy: The House of Representatives’ Legislative Committee approved yesterday amendments to the law regulating the Administrative Control Authority (ACA), granting the anti-corruption watchdog complete technical, financial, and administrative authority, Ahram Gate reports. The amendments — which the Ismail Cabinet had approved in July — will place the ACA under the jurisdiction of Ittihadiya, giving the president’s office authority to appoint the head of the organization to a four-year term.

The committee also signed off on six presidential decrees approving several financing agreements, including a EUR 100 mn loan from the French Development Agency, some EUR 290 mn in financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to purchase 100 new locomotives for the national railway system, and a USD 10 mn facility from the Islamic Development Bank.

INVESTMENT WATCH- Oriental Weavers Group subsidiary Oriental Urban Development is planning to invest EGP 450 mn in the Side Walk Mall in New Cairo alongside real estate marketing firm B2B, said Oriental Weavers founder Mohamed Farid Khamis. He tells Al Mal that Oriental Urban is also looking to buy 50 feddans in the North Coast to build a resort in 2018. He made no mention of the company’s plans to IPO in 2018, which he had previously revealed back in May.

Could we be heading into another global financial crisis? Germany’s outgoing Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, believes that “spiralling levels of global debt and liquidity present a major risk to the world economy.” He tells the Financial Times in an interview that prudent austerity measures are the best shield against economic fluctuations, especially now as more economists become aware of the fact that central banks are “fuelling bubbles” by pumping tns of USD into markets. He doesn’t seem to be alone in his thoughts, with warnings also being heard from the Bank for International Settlements and IMF chief Christine Lagarde, who said that “‘high levels of debt in many countries to rapid credit expansion in China, to excessive risk-taking in financial markets’” represent future obstacles to current economic development.

Turkey’s lira plunges as tensions escalate between US and Turkey over consulate staffer arrest: Turkey and US both decided on Sunday to suspend visa services for the other in “a sharp escalation of tensions that sent the lira down more than 6% against the USD,” Bloomberg reports. The decision came after a Turkish national and US consulate staffer in Istanbul was arrested for his alleged implication in the attempted coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016. The US government criticized the arrest in a Thursday statement to little reaction from Turkish authorities. The move sent the lira spiraling to its “softest level since January 30,” the Financial Times notes (paywall).

An attacker targeting the Saudi Arabian royal family killed two guards and injured three others on Saturday when he opened fire at the Al-Salam palace in Jeddah, Bloomberg reports. Saudi authorities identified the shooter, who was killed by security as he attempted to flee, as a 28 year-old Saudi national. “The attack highlights the challenges facing the kingdom as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman implements unprecedented measures to overhaul the economy and his security services fight [Daesh],” the news website says, noting that the last attack on the royal family happened in 2009, when Saudi was leading a crackdown on Al Qaeda operatives. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack in a statement.

Remembering The Doors: It’s hard to believe that it was 50 whole years ago that iconic 1960s rock band The Doors released their debut album, bringing to the world “chimerical feelings of ominous sunshine.” Despite their short-lived run, The Doors inspired generations of artists to come through their unique blend of sounds, in songs such as Light My Fire and L.A Woman. The Washington Post’s Jeff Weiss shines the spotlight on the band’s legacy after five decades of enduring popularity.

It’s football and only football for Egypt in the foreign press this morning, after the country’s national team broke a nearly-30 year-old curse, successfully securing a spot in the FIFA World Cup that will be played in Russia next year.

Elsewhere? “Cairo is a place of chaos and contradictions at every turn,” a British expat writes about navigating life in Cairo. She describes ours as a city “with a tenacious soul, an inextinguishable energy and a remarkable ability to excite, enthrall, enchant and infuriate in equal measures… a city of stark and disorienting contrasts, with very little offering for those seeking a safe, moderate, middle ground.” Cairo, “for better or for worse, is the smallest big city in the world … is also a place of palpable energy, soul, and beauty, which can make appearances often at the strangest and most unexpected moments,” she writes.

Also worth noting in brief:

• The arrest of LGBTQ citizens in Egypt is still making foreign headlines, with a new spotlight on the story from The Guardian.
• Egypt’s candidate for UNESCO leadership, Moushira Khattab, is not qualified for the post due to her silence and “sometimes complicity” in repressive policies, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information Gamal Eid said, the AP reports.
• The Egyptian government stepped up security efforts to protect minorities, Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak, the head of the Coptic Catholic Church, said, according to Crux.

We should look at how to rebuild with residents of informal settlements and benefit from the positives that their communities created, not try to demolish their homes, a controversial video from Mind’s Eye suggests (runtime: 3:30). Our view of informal settlements is “classist” and “elitist,” and people living in informal settlements have a right to the city, the video argues. It notes that informal settlements house two-thirds of Cairo’s residents. The majority of those settlements are not shanty towns, but rather building blocks that remain informal because of issues surrounding real estate ownership. Those settlements did not account for population density, building codes, or health standards generally but they remain pedestrian-friendly, provide quick access to economic centres, and have low consumption of energy. “We are trying to run away from them … to marginalise and ignore those residents until we can move them to housing projects in the desert” without paying attention to their family networks and economic livelihoods, the video posits. H/t Cairobserver.

Delegations from rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas are scheduled to arrive in Cairo today for Egypt-mediated talks on Tuesday, Ahram Gate reports. During the meetings, officials will attempt to iron out some of the points of disagreement between the two sides in order to move forward with the reconciliation process and ease the blockade on Gaza. President Abdel Fattah El Sisi stressed the importance of helping both sides achieve amity, saying yesterday that it will lay the groundwork for the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, according to an Ittihadiya statement. The Times of Israel also took note.

Egyptian Army Chief of Staff Mahmoud Hegazy met yesterday with Director General of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) and former US ambassador to Egypt Richard Stephen Beecroft to discuss their cooperation on border security in Sinai, according to a military statement. The discussions centered on optimizing border security and facilitating the MFO’s mission in Egypt, Xinhua reports. The MFO observes the Egyptian-Israeli border and ensures that security measures outlined under the bilateral peace treaty signed in 1979 are in full force.

EGAS plans to issue new oil and gas exploration tenders in 2018, an unnamed company official tells Al Shorouk. We had said last month that EGAS was planning to issue global tenders for the West Mediterranean concession once Norwegian firm PGS releases the results of its seismic survey for the area before the end of FY2017-18.

Egyptians smoked EGP 36.7 bn-worth of cigarettes in FY 2016-17, up form EGP 28.5 bn a year earlier, data from Eastern Company showed. The company increased its production output to 83 bn cigarettes from 80 bn a year earlier, the data also showed. Eastern Company exported EGP 103.5 mn worth of cigarettes in FY2016-17, up from EGP 66 mn a year before. Ahram Gate notes that 19.6% of Egypt’s population are smokers and 60% of them smoke between 15-24 cigarettes a day.

Fertilizer producer Evergrow has settled on East Beni Suef as the site of the EGP 9.5 bn fertilizer plant it announced it was building late last month, said company chairman Mohamed El Kheshen. He tells Al Mal that Evergrow is in talks with a consortium made up of Borealis and EcoPhos to determine their ownership stakes in the project after signing a partnership agreement with the companies. Evergrow’s share in the plant is expected to be 25%, said El Kheshen.

Real estate developer First Group is planning to establish a new EGP 4 bn compound in the North Coast’s Fouka area, Chairman Beshir Moustafa said, according to Al Masry Al Youm. The 95-feddan compound will include a four-star hotel and 1,600 residential units. Work on the first EGP 1 bn phase will begin by mid-next year, with plans to deliver the units by 2021. The company plans on self-funding the project and will treat bank loans as a “last resort” due to high interest rates, Moustafa said.

Heliopolis Housing is planning to begin marketing a new EGP 2 bn residential compound in Heliopolis this month, Deputy Chairman Wael Youssef announced, Al Masry Al Youm reports. The compound will span 100 feddans and is expected to be complete within five years.

The Vatican is expected to designate the path of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt as a spiritual pilgrimage site in January, said Nader Girgis, coordinator of the committee to revive the Holy Family Trail. The first wave of pilgrims is expected to arrive in May, he tells Al Borsa.

Kayan Egypt is investing EGP 15 mn in a logistics service zone in Alexandria, Al Mal reports. CEO Karim El Naggar says the zone will be used to hold imported cars and also export car part and vehicles to markets including Libya and Sudan. El Naggar expects the zone to be ready by 1Q2018 and said plans to assemble Seat cars locally depend on the development of the automotive directive. Overall, El Naggar projects that 80k cars will be sold domestically this year, 60% of which are imported and 40% assembled locally. He expects the sales volume to rise to 100k cars in 2018.

Banque Misr reduced its interest rates on deposits by 75 bps on Wednesday in response to the CBE’s decision to raise the required reserve on local currency deposits to 14%, the bank’s Deputy Chairman Akef El Maghraby says. This will exclude deposit certificates, he added. Analysts cited by Al Mal expect the trend to spread across most local banks.

The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) has asked Banque Misr and National Bank of Egypt for a EUR 300 loan to buy two new dredgers, sources tell Reuters. The banks are now preparing the terms of the agreement, they noted. SCA had signed a EUR 300 mn agreement with Dutch Royal IHC to purchase two dredgers last week.

The Microfinance Projects Development Authority (formerly known Social Fund for Development) is extending EGP 250 mn to the Egyptian Agricultural Bank (EAB), Al Mal reports. EAB, which was formerly the Principal Bank for Development and Agricultural Credit, will use the funds to finance SMEs in the fields of agriculture, farming, livestock, and irrigation.

A USD 1 increase in the price of oil costs the state’s FY2017-18 budget EGP 3-4 bn, Vice Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait tells Al Mal. He says the budget was drafted on the base assumption of oil prices hovering around USD 55 per bbl.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi signed-off yesterday on the appointment of Tarek Shibl as a deputy justice at the Supreme Constitutional Court, Youm7 reports. The court had selected Shibl as Hamdan Fahmy’s successor last month.

A Cairo criminal court sentenced 13 members of the Ajnad Misr terror group to death yesterday. All had been convicted of launching attacks on security forces, Reuters reports. “Ajnad Misr, or Soldiers of Egypt, were a group that emerged in January 2014 and targeted security forces in and around the Egyptian capital. The group’s leader was killed by security forces in 2015, and many of its remaining members are held in custody.”

Jumanji in Cairo? An ostrich was caught on camera enjoying a lovely stroll down a street in Giza minding its own business. Allaa Salah Eldin Abdo uploaded the video on Twitter, saying: “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I found a lost ostrich in the street.” We feel your confusion, man.

ON THIS DAY- On this day in 1967, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was executed by the Bolivian army. “The US-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara on October 8 while battling his band of guerrillas in Bolivia and assassinated him the following day. His hands were cut off as proof of death and his body was buried in an unmarked grave.” In 1988, Latvians marched on the streets of Riga to pressure Moscow for greater independence from the Soviet Union. Also on this day in 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the atomic program, starting the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb. This time last year, Christine Lagarde was telling us that devaluation and subsidy cuts needed to happen before the IMF could approve a loan and it was also the deadline to register for the value added tax. In 2015, we were fascinated by Netflix’s notion that “hard work is irrelevant.”