In early March, Egypt’s central bank hiked interest rates by 600 basis points, agreed to slow down infrastructure spending, and allowed the Egyptian pound’s value to plummet, in exchange for a $5 billion expansion of its preexisting loan package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to $8 billion. A floating exchange rate has been a longstanding demand of the IMF, and Bloomberg’s Chief of Emerging Markets Economist Ziad Daoud noted that the pound’s “movement is too smooth for the free floatation to be true.”

The latest IMF loan program comes on the heels of a massive deal by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), providing Egypt with $24 billion for land-development projects. Meanwhile, $11 billion in long-term deposits from the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia with the Egyptian central bank will be invested in real estate and other projects. This influx of cash—combined with the IMF loan—has rectified the government’s foreign currency shortage, at least for now. The sharply devalued Egyptian pound will make the country’s exports, like cotton, more competitive and improve its trade deficit. However, it will also greatly diminish the purchasing power of a population of whom roughly 30% already lives in poverty.

The Egyptian central bank’s moves are an attempt to address several economic problems simultaneously: A shortage of foreign currency, drastically higher black market foreign exchange rates, and rampant inflation that sent the price of unsubsidized bread up by nearly 100% in just a year.

Whether the latest reform package Egypt has agreed to will stick—particularly the floating exchange rate—is unclear. Egypt’s government has historically followed a currency devaluation with a fixed exchange rate. Funds from the $3 billion December 2022 IMF loan package were never disbursed because the central bank never transitioned the pound from a fixed to a floating exchange rate as stipulated.

It remains an open question to what extent sharply increasing interest rates and moving to a floating exchange rate will facilitate the economic growth needed to sustain the massive levels of government debt accrued to finance Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s ambitious investments in infrastructure. Israel’s war in Gaza has also harmed Egypt’s economy—tourism is down significantly, as is revenue from the Suez Canal thanks to Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. Remittances declined by approximately 30% in 2023 as Egyptians abroad reacted to the growing gap between the pound’s official and black market exchange rates.

From the beginning, Northern Ireland has been at the heart of Brexit’s thorniest problem: how to maintain an open land border with European Union (EU) member Ireland for friction-free trade while maintaining unfettered access between Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

Now, however, as various agreements are hammered out, the tiny outpost may be uniquely placed within the United Kingdom to take advantage of Brexit, according to Kevin Holland, CEO of Invest Northern Ireland.

“There are some areas where [the EU and UK] want something similar (which is more trade, more engagement) and there are some areas where both sides have got some quite serious differences to resolve and that’s often seemingly semantic things around jurisdiction but actually it’s very important to national pride and what Brexit is about,” Holland told Global Finance editors last week.

Because both sides—the European Union and the British government led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson—agree a hard border should not be re-imposed between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, goods will continue to flow freely between them. At the same time, Northern Ireland will be part of the UK customs union. This means goods produced within Northern Ireland would be uniquely positioned to ship to both the UK and EU markets.

This arrangement may prove attractive to companies looking to “Brexit-proof” their businesses or for supply chain opportunities. For example, Northern Ireland would be the only place in the world where a pharmaceutical manufacturer can export their final products directly into British and EU markets at the same time—assuming the two sides can reach a permanent agreement governing the flow of European goods between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. One remaining sticking point is how to protect the distinction between products made in Northern Ireland, which would be EU-compliant, and products made in the UK but shipped through Northern Ireland, which would not be. Already, reports that the UK team has been tasked with finding a way to “get around” initial agreements have incurred warnings from the EU that such maneuvers put the entire UK-EU trade relationship at risk.

Although the broader British economy may have suffered due to uncertainty surrounding Brexit, Holland says that foreign direct investment in Northern Ireland has not decreased since the 2015 referendum. Northern Ireland’s primary attractions as a business locale—a highly skilled English-speaking population at relatively low cost (an employee can be 40% cheaper Belfast than in Dublin, according to TK) and a low cost of living, including low personal tax rates—have not been impacted by the political vicissitudes of Brexit.

“Northern Ireland’s burgeoning fintech sector, together with a dynamic and highly educated workforce, makes Belfast an obvious choice for us,” said Riskonnect CEO Jim Wetekamp during his announcement that the 500-person Atlanta, Georgia-based company would open a 100-employee fintech center in Belfast.

fDI Markets ranked Belfast as a top global fintech investment location—second only to London and Singapore—and Belfast is the top destination for U.S. cybersecurity companies investing abroad, according to Holland.

“Seventy percent of the investors that come into Northern Ireland come for one reason, but then do a follow-on investment afterwards,” Holland noted. “That’s very much driven by talent and technology.” In addition to fintech and financial services, Northern Ireland’s strong economic sectors are in agribusiness, life sciences and health care, advanced manufacturing, and legal services.

“It’s a very positive development and we should salute and acknowledge the hard work of the negotiation teams on both sides,” Kieran Donoghue, who leads international financial services for Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority (IDA), told Global Finance editors on the day Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet approved the deal. Nevertheless, he was quick to note, “the politics around Brexit in Westminster are very challenging and very complex. There is undoubtedly a risk that the draft treaty text will be rejected by [British] Parliament, in which case we could end up in a very difficult place.”

Even as he spoke, the deal’s critics were growing louder. Five cabinet officials—Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, Junior Brexit Minister Suella Braverman, Junior Northern Ireland Minister Shailesh Vara, Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVeyand Minister of Transport Jo Johnson—resigned within a day. The pound plunged nearly 2%.

Ireland lies at the heart of Brexit’s insurmountable problem because Britain has conflicting, mutually exclusive desires. In sum: Northern Ireland (NI) is politically part of the UK, but physically occupies a sixth of the island of Ireland. The bulk of the island is the Republic of Ireland, which is politically part of the EU. Exiting the EU’s customs union requires creating a border between the UK and the EU, and thus a border somewhere around NI—either on land, between the Irish Republic and NI, or at sea, between NI and the rest of the UK. Neither is acceptable to Britain. Going borderless is unacceptable to the EU.

“We take no pleasure in the UK’s decision to leave the EU. They are our nearest and dearest neighbor and we deeply regret their decision to leave,” Donoghue lamented. “We think it would have been in their interest, the EU’s interest, and our interest had they remained and argued for the kind of EU they want from within the Union.”

IDA’s contingency planning has proceeded on the assumption of a ‘hard Brexit,’ Donoghue said. Such a Brexit would mean the return of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and end the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital between them. This disruption would put the €22 billion in Irish services exported to the UK in 2016 at risk because the cost of doing business would jump dramatically, damaging trade and investment flows and ultimately employment. The IDA estimates that Ireland would lose 40,000 jobs and its GDP growth would take a 3.7% hit in the event that a hard border with NI is created. Even in IDA’s best-case scenario (a so-called “soft Brexit”), the spike in foreign direct investment caused by companies seeking an attractive alternative to doing EU-related business in the UK is unlikely to offset the job losses.

Yet there is some upside in Brexit for the island nation. “Brexit is very much a double-edged sword for Ireland,” Donoghue said. “There’s been considerable interest in Ireland as a potential Brexit solution for multinationals who have a significant presence in the UK but are selling their goods and services to their customers in the EU.”

As it stands now, there are over 40 Brexit-related investments in Ireland across all business sectors. Although the country’s regulatory maturity in certain financial niches might not equal that of Paris or Frankfurt, the advantages it offers—a highly educated English-speaking workforce, business-friendly government and geographic proximity to the UK, which will remain one of the most important markets in Europe even after Brexit—give it an edge.

“We [Irish] earn our living by trading with the rest of the world,” Donoghue says. “The only way we can deliver a high quality of life for our people is through trade.”

Without a large domestic market to offer prospective businesses—less than 5 million people live in Ireland—successive governments enticed multinationals with a generous tax regime. This gamble paid off as many financial service companies domiciled back and middle-office functions in Ireland over the past three decades.

Brexit is an opportunity for Ireland to double-down on this strategy and scale up its presence and sophistication in the financial services sector by making targeted bids for more complex, high end activities such as derivatives trading previously done in the City of London. Already, Ireland has received Brexit-driven investment from such marquee names as J.P. Morgan, Citi, Barclay’s, TD Bank and S&P Global. Even Chaucer is leaving England—Chaucer Insurance, that is.

Brexit, driven by nationalist and protectionist fervor, is just one manifestation of the worldwide anti-globalization backlash. Ireland isn’t likely to fall prey to those sentiments. “Globalization—openness—has made Ireland much richer,” Donoghue says. “By and large we have benefitted from it.”