Standard Chartered plans major exit in MEA markets — but still wants to enter Egypt: Standard Chartered is completely shutting its business in seven countries in Africa and the Middle East in efforts to redirect resources to countries “where it can have the greatest scale and growth potential,” it said in a press release. The bank will fully exit Angola, Cameroon, Gambia, Jordan, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, and reduce its operations in Tanzania and Cote d’Ivoire. The bank is still planning to enter Egypt, having had its license application approved on a preliminary basis by the central bank earlier this year — and it has opened its first branch in KSA.

Is the era of negative-yielding debt at an end? Central bank moves to raise interest rates have seen global bond prices plummet while yields soar — a shift that could put paid to the phenomenon of negative yields in the debt markets, the Financial Times reports. Negative yields — where prices are so high and yields so low that investors would lose money if they held their bonds to term — have been a firm feature of European and Japanese bond markets in recent years. But with central banks almost everywhere turning hawkish amid sustained price pressures, the value of bonds with yields below zero has plunged from more than USD 14 tn in December to under USD 3 tn, the salmon-colored paper reports citing Bloomberg data.

THE CLOSING BELL-

The EGX30 fell 1.6% at Thursday’s close on turnover of EGP 996 mn (4.6% above the 90-day average). Regional investors were net buyers. The index is down 10.6% YTD.

In the green: CIRA (+10.3%), Fawry (+2.7%) and Cleopatra Hospital (+2.4%).

In the red: EFG Hermes (-20.0%), AMOC (-9.1%) and Sidi Kerir Petrochem (-6.5%).