We have plenty of IPO and M&A news leading the Speed Round this morning, which always makes us particularly happy.

Stormy weather is set to sweep northern parts of the country today including Cairo, according to the national weather service, AMAY reports. High winds, dust storms and rain are all in the cards and could be severe enough at times to disrupt traffic in both ports and on highways. Look for a daytime high of up to 21°C in the nation’s capital. The long range forecast, meanwhile, includes a chance of more rain on Thursday, according to our favourite weather apps. Egypt Independent, meanwhile, has today’s forecast in English.

No one has officially filed papers to run in this year’s presidential election as of early this morning, the National Election Commission reports. The nomination perdiod opened yesterday and runs through Monday, 29 January.

Look for the global conversation to swing toward Donald Trump and America’s place in the world as the self-appointed chattering class heads to Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, which officially gets underway tomorrow. The event’s program is here, and you can head to the WEF’s website to read about such topics as the need for “a new era of data responsibility,” why making things by hand still matters, the new age of CEO activism and how 5G will change the world, among other topics.

(And on the topic of why making things by hand still matters, we just picked up a second-hand copy of Shop Class as Soulcraftto re-read over the long weekend. If you ever tire of pushing money and ideas around as pixels on a screen and long for the physical, this concise, thought-provoking tome will help with the answer.)

The US government will be closed today, with only essential personnel reporting for work after a bipartisan group of casually dressed senators failed to reach a compromise before the US work week began despite scrambling all weekend. But The Donald is still headed to Davos, the Financial Times tells us.

US Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Israel last night for a visit “shadowed by [the] Palestinian snub over Jerusalem,” says Bloomberg. The main Arab party in the Israeli Knesset, which Pence is set to address later this afternoon, said it would boycott his speech to protest US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Pence, who’s also expected to sit down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his stay, travels to Tel Aviv after meetings with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in Cairo and Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman. The veep asked El Sisi and Abdullah to relay to the Palestinian Authority that the US is looking to restart peace negotiations, a source familiar to the matter said, according to Bloomberg. Palestinian officials canceled planned meetings with Pence to protest the Jerusalem decision.

In miscellany this morning:

• If you know anything about the history of Egypt’s financial sector, you’ll recognize that Iran is having its own Rayyan moment right now.
• Our new-again Russian friends at having a great time of it: “Russia is on the verge of earning more roubles per barrel of oil than at any point in its history, even though crude prices are still languishing at less than half their peak level in USD terms, set in 2008,” the Financial Times reminds us.
• Amid today’s low oil prices, Bloomberg writes: The American sedan is dying. Long live the SUV.
• What if children should be spending more time with screens, not less, the Wall Street Journal asks. The catch: Differentiating between the corrosive effects of passive consumption (videos) and active screen time (including parent-approved video games).

Finally: One of the biggest questions about the global economy this year remains the potential for a major crisis or downturn in China’s economy, where fears of what lies beneath the surface continue to give heart to the bears. Since we first started Enterprise back in the fall of 2014, we’ve been among those who see the warning signs. The Financial Times notes this morning that we’re not alone, but asks why, when China’s economy continues to grow, have the bears been wrong? “Did they fail to understand the way the Chinese economy works or were they just too early?”

The last word in the salmon-coloured paper’s Long Read on that subject this morning goes to Patrick Chovanec, an old China hand and chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management who is also very sharp on Egypt. Chovanec notes: “If you have cancer and the doctor gives you three months to live, and you live much longer than that, you still have cancer. You wouldn’t stop by your doctor and laugh at how wrong he was.” Go read China: market bulls beat the short sellers—for now.