Parking my small white Tiida in the public car park in my Darat Al Miyah neighbourhood is often a fraught experience.
Oneself needs to get home early enough so as to ensure a spot near the main thoroughfare. A late arrival often means the car will be stuck in the back lots, where it will undoubtedly become a fielder in the latest winter season street-cricket match.
While not a “season” in the proper sense, the regular series of matches is a midnight until 2am proposition.
I love it, even if my car windshield bears the brunt of many a tennis ball hook shot. The street-cricket culture stirs up deep memories of my childhood in Abu Dhabi back in the 1980s, back before the popularity of gaming consoles and the advent of mobile phones took hold, at a time when the local car park was something of a playground for my neighbours and I.
It was a place to meet friends for a stroll to discuss Maradona’s latest goal while sipping on a Suntop. It was also the spot to test-drive the latest bike or remote-control car.
The cool hours between 5pm and 8pm was the only free time for youths, who were otherwise stuck in the regimented lifestyle that consisted of home and school.
At the centre of it all was a selection of physical games held simultaneously across the large car parks, ranging from sports, hide-and-seek, and my first glimpses of cricket. On any given day, there were often at least three football matches on the go. It was here that I got my first experience of tribalism.
Each match was played by kids living in the same building. Newcomers were tolerated only if they were guests or a relative of the players involved.
For the unitiated, the undisputed leader of any football match was the player who owns the ball. He decided what time the match was played and what team to lead – that’s fair enough, he (well, his parents) were the ones who shelled out the dirhams for the ball, so the last thing we could control was how many cartoons he could watch before making his way downstairs to choose his team and play.
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Read more from Saeed:
Abu Dhabi through the eyes of an extraordinary teen
How VAT has revolutionised my own Abu Dhabi neighbourhood
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My second life-lesson gleaned from the car park was that power often corrupts. As is often the case in adulthood, the acquiesce from the crowd was intoxicating, and before we knew it we were stuck with a little Napoleon demanding his side wear red to resemble Manchester United.
This is how coups happen; the disenfranchised players look for a new leader – basically someone with the courage to ask their cash-strapped parents for their own football, which would then trigger a revolution, with all players demanding to play with the new merchandise instead. Stripped from power and prestige, the former leader often created his own breakaway match featuring blood relatives, only to return to the fold a while later. He was accepted back – he was part of the tribe, after all.
I still recall one of the last conversations I had with the boys before I left that neighbourhood bound for Melbourne, Australia, as a 9-year-old, not knowing I would eventually return 20 years later.
“Will you come back?” said Talal, the barrel-chested Sudanese with the healthy Afro.
“I don’t think so,” I muttered.
There was nothing left to say, we knew our time in the UAE had a shelf-life. Alas, two of the boys chipped in to buy me a Suntop – one of the sweetest goodbyes, and memories for a lifetime.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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