Happy Sunday, ladies and gentlemen: It’s PMI Day: The Markit / Emirates NBD purchasing managers’ index for March is due out at 6:15am CLT. You can download the summary report here when it arrives. The indicator, which measures non-oil business activity in Egypt, hit its lowest level in 17 months in the February survey.

It’s also the start of what is shaping up to be a very busy week on the domestic news front…

• President Abdel Fattah El Sisi meets US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, 9 April.
• Renaissance Capital’s annual Egypt Investors Conference takes place in Cape Town Tuesday and Wednesday. EGX Chairman Mohamed Farid will deliver the keynote address on expanding the role of capital markets in Egypt’s economy. Tap or click here to view the preliminary agenda for the event (pdf).
• Monthly inflation figures are due out on Wednesday. Annual headline inflation accelerated to 14.4% in February, up from 12.7% the previous month.
• AmCham is holding its annual HR Day at the Cairo Marriott Hotel on 10 April.

…and abroad:

• The IMF and World Bank are holding their spring meetings on 12-14 April in Washington, DC.
• The UK will, theoretically, leave the European Union on Friday, 12 April. Prime Minister Theresa May has asked for a three-month extension to 30 June.
• First quarter earnings season gets underway in the United States at week’s end as JPMorgan and Wells Fargo report results. The expectation, as we noted last week, is for corporate earnings in the US and Europe to fall in 1Q for the first time since 2016.

Fifteen of the startups the WEF thinks will make a dent in the Arab world are from Egypt. That is according to its list of “the 100 Arab start-ups shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” We can’t say we agree with every choice, but still… The list came out to mark the group’s annual meeting on the Middle East.

The Donald’s nominee is the new president of the World Bank: David Malpass was named to the post this weekend by the institution’s executive directors, according to a statement. Malpass, previously undersecretary for international affairs at Treasury, starts his five-year term on Tuesday. Despite his easy run for the position, Malpass has been met with skepticism from many over his views on the bank’s traditional goals and policies, including multilateralism and combating climate change, James Politi writes for the Financial Times.

Malpass could visit Egypt, we were told in Washington, DC, at the end of AmCham’s annual Doorknock mission. Malpass has identified Egypt as a “priority country” and the World Bank is in talks with Egypt for a “digital infrastructure development loan” and a separate USD 200 mn to support SMEs. We have chapter and verse on that and more in this morning’s Spotlight, below.

The Donald has called on the US Federal Reserve to cut rates and restart its ‘quantitative easing’ stimulus program, according to the FT. Trump also raised eyebrows over the weekend as he suggested he wants to nominate loyalists Herman Cain and Stephen Moore to the Fed’s board. The move would undermine the Fed’s position as one of the world’s most powerful independent financial institutions, the NYT argues, while the FT notes elsewhere that Friday’s jobs report in the US — which found cooler wage growth in March and more job growth than expected — will leave the Fed in a “patient mood.”

March may have marked the end of the tightening cycle for emerging market central banks after the month saw just three net rate cuts in 37 markets, Reuters says. March was the second consecutive month of net rate cuts, after “policymakers battled the fallout from a strong USD, rising inflation and softer currencies which dominated most of 2018.”

SIGN OF THE TIMES- Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is backing away from emerging market bonds in a move that’s getting attention from both the FT and the WSJ. Christian Maggio, the head of EM strategy at TD Securities in London says the change “won’t cause won’t cause seismic waves in EMs and, under certain circumstances, may even go mostly unnoticed” because the anticipated USD 12 bn cut to holdings is “a mangeable sum in the multi-tn USD market.”

In regional news this morning:

• Saudi Aramco is preparing for a “jumbo” bond issuance this week that could be worth at least USD 10 bn, according to Bloomberg.
• Clashes are taking place south of Tripoli after eastern commander Gen. Khalifa Haftar ordered his forces to advance on the Libyan capital last week, the BBC reports. Egypt, which backs Haftar’s Libyan National Army, has called for him to end the offensive (more on this in this morning’s Diplomacy, below).
• Thousands of people returned to the streets of Algeria over the weekend demanding further government resignations, Reuters reports. The continued unrest is beginning to threaten agreements between state petroleum company Sonatrach and international oil firms, Bloomberg says.
• Protests in Sudan “reached army headquarters for the first time” yesterday, the FT reports.

Bobby Axelrod has lunch with the FT. Or at least Damian Lewis, the British actor who portrays one of the two lead characters in our favourite TV series, does.

Save your tears: Not all hedgies and fintech bros will be cut off from Patagonia fleeces, but good luck getting one if your company doesn’t already work with the socially conscious brand, this piece from the NYT suggests.