It remains a slow news week on the business and economy fronts as the press was still focused yesterday on developments at the EU-Arab League summit in Sharm and as the week got off to a slow start in the west.

Egypt-South Korea meetings continue in Seoul. A forum on Egyptian-South Korean cooperation in financial markets and regulation will take place in Seoul today, the Finance Ministry said. Finance Minister Mohamed Maait, Investment Minister Sahar Nasr and Suez Canal Authority head Mohab Mamish held talks with senior South Korean officials yesterday ahead of the forum as part of their visit to drum up investments. Nothing has come out of the talks so far, but we have more on the discussions in Diplomacy + Foreign Trade, below.

Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry will head to Geneva today to deliver an address to the 40th session of the UN Human Rights Council, according to a ministry statement. Shoukry will also deliver a speech to the Conference on Disarmament, and have meetings with several international organizations including the World Health Organization and International Telecommunication Union.

A UN-sponsored talk in Cairo today looks at uses for blockchain outside cryptocurrencies. The discussion is also hosted by the Egypt Technology Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center and IBM Egypt. Tap or click here to learn more or register for the event.

The EU-Arab League summit in Sharm El Sheikh ended yesterday. We have the full rundown in this morning’s Speed Round, below — it should be enough to hold you until the next edition of the summit, which is apparently slated for 2022 in Brussels.

End of an era: Bank of America will stop using the Merrill Lynch name at its trading and investment banking arms, the firm said yesterday in a press release. BofA acquired the storied Merrill Lynch brand during the 2008 financial crisis. The investment bank and capital markets business will “ditch the 104-year old name to become BofA Securities,” Reuters writes, and the firm will also “rebrand the bulk of its wealth-management business as simply Merrill,” the Wall Street Journal adds. The “trademark bull will remain in its logo,” the WSJ says. The news is getting wide play in the global financial press — see the Financial Times, CNBC and Bloomberg, as you prefer. Merrill Lynch has used the bull as part of its brand identity since 1974, Adweek tells us.

Shake Shack, our favourite mass-market burger joint, disappointed Wall Street with a 2019 sales projection that fell short of expectations even as it reported strong top-line growth in the last quarter of 2018, the Financial Times reports.

In international news worth knowing this morning:

• Donald Trump said that he doesn’t want to rush North Korea into denuclearization, but “as long as there’s no testing, we’re happy,” according to the FT. The American president made the as he prepared to travel to Vietnam to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi for two days of talks.
• Iranian FM Mohammad Javad Zarif announced his resignation on social media yesterday.
• Bahrain’s central bank has finalized the regulatory framework for “a range of activities relevant to crypto assets” covering licensing, governance and cyber security, writes Bloomberg. Once the Gulf’s undisputed banking hub, Bahrain is looking for an edge in an increasingly competitive market.

MUST READ of the morning: We all stink at hiring. That’s the takeaway from an opinion piece by Wharton’s Peter Cappelli, who notes that “lengthy, multilayered hiring processes leave vacancies open far longer than necessary and alienate job candidates. … Companies often say people are their most important asset. But, for many, you’d never know it by the way they actually go about hiring those people.” Whether you’re the CHRO, the chief executive or a line manager, you want to read The biggest mistakes companies make with hiringin the Wall Street Journal.