UAE gets first woman market regulator: Maryam Butti Al Suwaidi was appointed chief executive of the UAE’s market regulator — the Securities and Commodities Authority — in what is a significant step for the representation of women in finance in the Gulf, Bloomberg reports. The UAE market regulator is leading by example, having announced earlier this year that it would require all listed companies to include at least one female member on their boards, in a bid to boost gender diversity.

ACWA Power shares will start trading on the Tadawul this morning: Trading on Saudi Arabia’s first USD 1 bn IPO since Aramco will begin today, according to a Tadawul bourse statement. The company is selling an 11% stake at USD 14.9 per share, in what is the kingdom’s biggest IPO since Aramco’s mammoth debut last year, Bloomberg reports.

Noon is set to spend USD 2 bn on Gulf domination: The Dubai-based e-commerce platform expects to draw up to USD 2 bn in financing from investors including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF over the next three to four years, with an eye on growing its share of the Gulf e-commerce market, company founder Mohamed Alabbar tells Bloomberg. The inflows will go towards upgrading infrastructure and speeding up deliveries, Alabbar said, adding that the company is looking to expand into new countries in the region. The company declined to comment when we pressed it on whether some of the investment would be channeled into Egypt.

EM policymakers have their hands tied in the face of soaring demand and slowing growth: Emerging economies will have a harder time regulating growth and inflation than their advanced counterparts amid a slowdown in global post-covid recovery, the Financial Times reports. In EMs, “governments and central banks cannot easily boost demand without running into even more difficult inflationary pressures,” the FT writes. The Brookings-FT Tracking Index for the Global Economic Recovery (Tiger) showed declining growth in both advanced economies and EMs since March, with supply bottlenecks and a resurgence of the delta variant keeping growth muted.

THE CLOSING BELL-

The EGX30 rose 1.2% yesterday on turnover of EGP 939 mn (39.3% below the 90-day average). Foreign investors were net sellers. The index is down 1.7% YTD.

In the green: Egyptian Kuwait Holding-EGP (+5.6%), AMOC (+2.8%) and Mopco (+2.8%).

In the red: Rameda (-2.4%), GB Auto (-2.0%) and Orascom Development Egypt (-1.4%).

Asian markets are largely in the green this morning, while futures at dispatch time suggest European and US markets will come under selling pressure at the opening bell. Futures suggest the Dow, S&P, Nasdaq, DAX, CAC and FTSE will all open in the red later today. US crude and yields on 10-year US treasuries are both advancing in the pre-market.