Expect another low inflation reading when Capmas releases September’s figures later today. Annual headline inflation plunged to 7.5% in August, the lowest reading in six-and-a-half years. Analysts are expecting the downward trend to hold, with Pharos’ Radwa El Sweify predicting overall annual inflation to cool to 4.7% and Prime Research estimating urban inflation to fall to between 5.3% and 5.5%.

A Russian business delegation headed by Trade Minister Denis Manturov is in town for the last day today for a joint forum to discuss cooperation. Manturov told Trade Minister Amr Nassar yesterday that 55 Russian companies are interested in getting involved in the Russian Industrial Zone (RIZ). We have the story in Diplomacy + Foreign Trade, below.

A Portuguese investor delegation is in Suez today to eye up a piece of the city’s shipping business, according to Masrawy.

IDA’s new industrial land platform to launch today: Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly will hold a press conference today to launch the Industrial Development Authority’s (IDA) new electronic platform for investors to buy industrial land.

Key dates for your diaries this month:

• The IMF and World Bank annual meetings take place next week from 14-20 October.
• The fifth ‘Egypt Can’ conference will be held on 16-17 October. The event will be attended by 65 of the biggest foreign investors in Egypt, as well as representatives from international financial institutions, businesses and the Egyptian government.
• The Intelligent Cities Exhibition & Conference will take place at the Hilton Heliopolis on 23-24 October.
• B2B conference for German, Egyptian companies to talk cooperation: The German-Arab Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development, and Energy are hosting a B2B conference for a German delegation that will be in Cairo later this month to talk potential cooperation with Egyptian businesses. The event will take place on Monday, 28 October in Cairo. Click or tap here to register.
• The US Federal Reserve will meet on 29-30 October to review key interest rates.

Afreximbank announces potential GDR offering on LSE: The Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank is considering an initial public offering of global depository receipts (GDRs) on the London Stock Exchange, according to a statement (pdf). The GDRs would represent the bank’s class D ordinary shares, and would, if executed, be exchangeable with depository receipts listed in Mauritius. The bank has yet to determine the size of the offering, which “comes as a rare boost to the UK’s anaemic IPO market, which is suffering from a dearth of new listings as Brexit hangs over the country’s economy and capital markets,” the Financial Times says.

Advisors: Afreximbank has tapped JPMorgan and HSBC to act as joint bookrunners on the potential listing.

Are this year’s IPO disasters reminiscent of the dot-com bubble? Former Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld has said that this year’s boom in less-than-impressive tech IPOs has eerie similarities to the dot-com bubble in the 1990s, CNBC reports. Despite multi-bn USD pre-IPO valuations, Lyft, Uber and Peloton all bombed on the market this year, as investors became increasingly concerned about profitability. “In a sense, it reminded me back of the dot-com era, when you had companies going public that had no known path to profitability,” Greifeld said.

Global tech firms may soon be forced to — whisper it — pay their taxes. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has unveiled plans (pdf) to overhaul the global tax system in a bid to crack down on tax avoidance by our tech overlords. Current international taxation rules hold that governments only have a right to tax companies with a physical presence in the country, allowing digital service providers to ship profits overseas to countries with low corporate taxes. The OECD is now calling for this system to be overturned, giving countries the right to tax profits wherever they are placed in the world. The Financial Times has more.

The road to debt default is paved with good intentions. The World Bank, IMF, and other development banks are contributing to debt distress in the world’s poorest countries even as they seek to alleviate these problems, chief executive of the Currency Exchange Fund Ruurd Brouwer writes in the Financial Times. By offering “one size fits all” USD-denominated loans as part of their debt sustainability framework, these institutions end up forcing vulnerable countries into taking on currency risk that they can ill afford, he says.

Negative interest rate insanity continues: Greece — yes, that country which just four years ago was inches away from economic oblivion — is now selling bonds at a negative yield. Bloomberg reports that our neighbors to the north sold EUR 487 mn-worth of -0.02% interest-yielding treasury bills yesterday, meaning that investors are actually paying to hold debt issued by a government which had it not been for bns of EUR in bailout money would have been declared insolvent long ago.

Did China just offer a way out of the trade war? Beijing has offered to import more US agricultural products to break the impasse in trade negotiations as a new round of talks kick off today, sources told the Financial Times. “[China’s chief negotiator] Liu He is coming with real offers, it’s not an empty visit,” one of the sources said. “The Chinese are ready to de-escalate.” Both sides are reportedly keen to avoid a new round of tariffs, which are scheduled to kick in on 15 October if no agreement is reached. US stocks reacted positively to the news, with the S&P 500 up 0.9% and the Nasdaq Composite rising 1%.

B’naire Samih Sawiris took a slightly run-down “ghost town” in a secluded part of the Alps and turned it into Switzerland’s best-kept ultra-luxury secret ski resort. This Bloomberg article tells the story, complete with gorgeous photos. Sawiris’ ability to see promise in undiscovered areas is discussed further in today’s My Morning Routine with Raouf Tawfik, general manager of El Gouna, below.