Keep an eye on the EGP today. The pound is flirting with the EGP 16.00 barrier this morning, with the CBE quoting a 16.0038 / 16.1062 buy / sell split in its table of average market rates for Thursday. Anecdotal evidence over the weekend suggests to us that small-time USD hoarders are selling into the fall. Where does the EGP settle? Buried in a Financial Times piece are suggestions from RenCap (12.90) and Capital Economics (14.00), while a Federation of Chambers of Commerce official told Lamees El Hadidy last night that the organization expects the EGP to strengthen to 14-15 to the greenback by the end of April. (More in Speed Round and Last Night’s Talk Shows, below).

HDBK to spin off real estate holdings: The board of the Housing and Development Bank (HDBK) voted last week to move forward with a demerger that will see it spin off its real estate holdings into a separate company, the bank said in a statement (pdf).

The Donald is revising his travel ban, aiming to make it bullet-proof with the courts by exempting permanent residents or so-called “green card” holders. The ban would, however, include temporary bars on immigration and refugees from the same seven Muslim majority countries, according to the Wall Street Journal (paywall) which has seen a State Department memo on the subject. The revised executive order could be issued as soon as Tuesday. Meanwhile, Cairo veteran Abigail Hauslohner reports for the Washington Post that a fringe “grass roots national security group” that claims to have a “direct line” to US President Donald Trump is lobbying to expand the executive order to include Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The big global business news this morning: Unilever rebuffed on Friday a USD 143 bn takeover offer from Kraft Heinz to create the world’s second-largest food company. Other large industry players are “probably breathing a sigh of relief, but then it becomes a question of what’s next. Sales [at major global players] aren’t getting better and at some point the cost cuts are going to run out,” one analyst tells Bloomberg is a solid recap of what could be next, and the New York Times joins it in expecting more transactions in the sector.