A year that starts in July

Egypt's financial year turned last week. On the first of July the state opened its books again, and so did a good share of the companies that keep time with it.

Nothing in the market moved. Only the calendar did.

This is the part of working across the region that no plan has a line for. On one morning a partner in Cairo is a week into a fresh year with the whole of it still in front of him. A head office running on a January year is at its exact halfway mark, counting what is left and deciding what to hold back until it knows how the autumn looks. A group on an April year is opening its second quarter. Same conversation, three positions.

So the same request arrives as three different requests. Money asked for in Cairo this month is asked of somebody whose year is untouched, who can say yes without taking it from anything else. The identical ask in May reaches a man looking at the bottom of a barrel. The number did not change. The month did.

For a long time I read those answers as character. The Cairo yes looked like appetite. The answer from a head office looked like caution, or like a quiet lack of belief in the market, and I built a private list of who was easy to work with and who was difficult. Most of that list was a calendar I had not bothered to learn.

Now, before any of the arguments, I want to know which month of their own year the person across the table is standing in. It takes one question and it is worth more than the slide.