Cerberus Capital Management has reportedly withdrawn its offer for the rights to manage the Abraaj Group’s assets after investors rejected the firm’s USD 25 mn bid, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg earlier this month. Cerberus presented the lowest offer; the Dubai-based private equity firm is currently undergoing liquidation and a court-ordered restructuring following allegations of misuse funds. Abu Dhabi Capital Management was said to have made a USD 55 mn offer for the right to run Abraaj’s assets. Read Bloomberg’s “Behind the Spectacular Collapse of a Private Equity Titan” for a recap on Abraaj’s fall from grace.

Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding and Arab Dairy are among the latest companies to disavow ties to Abraaj in disclosures to the bourse yesterday, Al Mal reports.

Optimism in Ethiopia and Eritrea — and a murder mystery. Every Ethiopian and Eritrean we’ve bumped into in the past week (a shockingly large number, oddly enough) has been uniformly optimistic about the prospects for (a) Ethiopia’s warming ties with other regional countries, including Egypt and (b) for lasting peace with neighbor Eritrea. New Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has proven a breath of fresh air, accepting an aid and investment package from the UAE, working to improve relations with Egypt that have been strained by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and appearing in person with the leader of Eritrea. Cue the murder mystery, which saw thousands of people gather in Addis Ababa on Sunday to mourn the killing of Semegnew Bekele, the project manager for GERD. Bekele was “was found slumped behind the wheel of his Toyota Land Cruiser … at 8:30 a.m. [last Thursday]. He had a gunshot wound to his head,” the New York Times reports. No suspects have yet been identified, and investigators are yet to confirm the killing was connected to Bekele’s work on the dam, but that hasn’t stopped innuendo in some corners that Egypt could have been involved.

Zimbabwe held yesterday its first presidential election after strongman Robert Mugabe’s resignation last November, Bloomberg reports. Results are expected on or before 4 August.

US President Donald Trump said he’s willing to open the door for new talks with Iran to hammer out a nuclear agreement “if they wanted to meet,” according to the Washington Post. The Donald is apparently ready to do the sitdown without preconditions.

Being a foreign investor in China is just about to get a little more difficult after the country’s Ministry of Commerce drafted amendments to investment rules that will see “foreigners seeking ‘strategic’ stakes in listed Chinese companies [facing] broader national security reviews.” The move is a response to the “US, Britain and Germany [moving] to strengthen their merger review systems to make it harder for foreign groups to take over domestic companies deemed to have assets critical to national security,” according to the Financial Times.

The US economy has moved beyond “the new normal” of relatively anemic growth, Bloomberg quotes Allianz chief economic advisor Mohamed El-Erian as saying, suggesting “the world’s largest economy has finally broken out from its post-crisis malaise. ‘The US on a standalone basis has exited this new normal, is now finding a higher growth equilibrium, 2.5 to 3,’” El-Erian told Bloomberg in a TV interview yesterday.

In miscellany today: Season three of Stranger Things definitely won’t be out until the summer of 2019. That’s the takeaway from Entertainment Weekly, which also says that a Netflix programming exec is promising the third season will be better than was season two. Drown your sorrows by watching the season three micro-trailer / teaser (watch, runtime: 1:26). And maybe check out the trailer for Summer of ‘84: “The movie focuses on a group of four young guy friends trying to figure out who’s responsible for killing people in their town — oh hey, it’s the plot of Stranger Things, minus one girl with superpowers,” Refinery 29 writes (watch, runtime: 1:49). The film is out in select theaters starting 10 August.