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An Israeli strike destroyed a bridge in the upper reaches of northern Lebanon, official media said on Sunday, in an expansion of an air campaign against Hezbollah supply lines from Syria.
Lebanon's National News Agency said that one child was killed in the attack on Akroum, in Akkar governorate, on the border with Syria. The attack destroyed a bridge linking the rugged area with the interior of Lebanon, local sources said.
Mohammad Yehia, a parliamentarian representing the mostly Sunni region, said the attack late on Saturday was part of Israeli's objective of "cutting off Lebanese areas from each other, and from the outside [world]". Historically, Akkar has been part of a lawless arc comprising northern and eastern Lebanese areas on the border with Syria, where smuggling of drugs, weapons and other contraband has been rife.
Mr Yehia called for "holding on to national unity". Sectarian tensions in Lebanon have risen since Hezbollah, a Shiite armed group supported by Iran that has members in parliament but operates outside the control of state authorities, started attacks on northern Israel in October last year. The Hezbollah-Israel war, the second since 2006, started a day after Hamas, another militant group supported by Iran, killed 1,200 people in an incursion into south Israel from Gaza on October 7. Israel retaliated with a military offensive in Gaza that is now in its 13th month.
Israel has carried out extensive air strikes in the Bekaa Valley, which is adjacent to Akkar, since launching an all-out offensive against Hezbollah in later September, after a year of limited exchanges across Lebanon's southern border.
Earlier that month, Israel reportedly sent its special forces into Syria to destroy an Iranian-controlled weapons development facility in Masyaf, a city in Hama province. The raid ushered in a concerted campaign to cut off Hezbollah weapon deliveries from Iran, focused on areas along the border between Lebanon and central Syria. Among the targets has been the Syrian city of Qusayr and its countryside, a Hezbollah stronghold near Akroum.
The Qusayr area has increasingly served as a supply route since Hezbollah captured the city from rebels fighting the Syrian army and allied pro-Iranian militia in 2013, security officials in the Middle East said. Hezbollah poured militiamen and hardware into Syria shortly after the 2011 revolt against President Bashar Al Assad.
During the course of the ensuing civil war, Hezbollah, along with Iraqi militias, became the enforcers of an Iranian-controlled corridor running across Syria from Iraq to Lebanon. Israel has struck targets in the corridor hundreds of times in the last decade.
The attack on Akroum was followed overnight by an Israeli strike on the Jusiya border crossing south of Qusayr, Telegram groups run by loyalists of Mr Al Assad said, without mentioning any casualties.
On Thursday, Israeli war planes struck a road and workshops in Qusayr, residents said on WhatsApp groups. Syrian media quoted a military official as saying Israel targeted residential buildings.
Precision missiles and drones, developed and assembled at Iranian-run sites in central Syria, have been flowing across the border to Hezbollah, Syrian opposition sources said, adding that Iraqi militias are involved in delivering the parts from Iran.
Iran has launched what it describes as a multi-front war by its proxies against Israel, in response to the war in Gaza. But Hezbollah has said in the recent weeks that it would accept a ceasefire with Israel even if the Gaza war continues, in a reversal of its previous stance.
The so-called Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a collection of Iran-backed armed groups, said it had launched drone attacks on the Israeli-occupied area of the Golan Heights and on the Jordan Valley on the weekend. There were no reports of casualties, or any confirmation that the drones had reached their targets. They would need to pass over Jordan to do so.
In the past several weeks, Jordanian authorities have reported instances of drones falling in various areas of the country, warning people to stay away from the objects and to report any new occurrences. But officials have not said whether the drones were brought down by air defences, or who launched them.
Jordanian troops on Sunday foiled attempts by "several groups of smugglers" to infiltrate the kingdom's northern border with Syria, according to a military official quoted by state media. One smuggler was killed when the army engaged with the infiltrators at dawn, he said, without giving details.
Jordan has accused the Syrian military and its Iran-aligned militia allies of complicity in the cross border drug trafficking, especially of the amphetamine Captagon, which Arab security officials says constitutes a major source of financing for Tehran's allies in Syria and Lebanon. Mr Al Assad has denied that any official Syrian involvement.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
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.”
How Tesla’s price correction has hit fund managers
Investing in disruptive technology can be a bumpy ride, as investors in Tesla were reminded on Friday, when its stock dropped 7.5 per cent in early trading to $575.
It recovered slightly but still ended the week 15 per cent lower and is down a third from its all-time high of $883 on January 26. The electric car maker’s market cap fell from $834 billion to about $567bn in that time, a drop of an astonishing $267bn, and a blow for those who bought Tesla stock late.
The collapse also hit fund managers that have gone big on Tesla, notably the UK-based Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF.
Tesla is the top holding in both funds, making up a hefty 10 per cent of total assets under management. Both funds have fallen by a quarter in the past month.
Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital, recently warned that Tesla founder Elon Musk had “flown a bit too close to the sun”, after getting carried away by investing $1.5bn of the company’s money in Bitcoin.
He also predicted Tesla’s sales could struggle as traditional auto manufacturers ramp up electric car production, destroying its first mover advantage.
AJ Bell’s Russ Mould warns that many investors buy tech stocks when earnings forecasts are rising, almost regardless of valuation. “When it works, it really works. But when it goes wrong, elevated valuations leave little or no downside protection.”
A Tesla correction was probably baked in after last year’s astonishing share price surge, and many investors will see this as an opportunity to load up at a reduced price.
Dramatic swings are to be expected when investing in disruptive technology, as Ms Wood at ARK makes clear.
Every week, she sends subscribers a commentary listing “stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15 per cent in a day” during the week.
Her latest commentary, issued on Friday, showed seven stocks displaying extreme volatility, led by ExOne, a leader in binder jetting 3D printing technology. It jumped 24 per cent, boosted by news that fellow 3D printing specialist Stratasys had beaten fourth-quarter revenues and earnings expectations, seen as good news for the sector.
By contrast, computational drug and material discovery company Schrödinger fell 27 per cent after quarterly and full-year results showed its core software sales and drug development pipeline slowing.
Despite that setback, Ms Wood remains positive, arguing that its “medicinal chemistry platform offers a powerful and unique view into chemical space”.
In her weekly video view, she remains bullish, stating that: “We are on the right side of change, and disruptive innovation is going to deliver exponential growth trajectories for many of our companies, in fact, most of them.”
Ms Wood remains committed to Tesla as she expects global electric car sales to compound at an average annual rate of 82 per cent for the next five years.
She said these are so “enormous that some people find them unbelievable”, and argues that this scepticism, especially among institutional investors, “festers” and creates a great opportunity for ARK.
Only you can decide whether you are a believer or a festering sceptic. If it’s the former, then buckle up.
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
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MATCH INFO
Championship play-offs, second legs:
Aston Villa 0
Middlesbrough 0
(Aston Villa advance 1-0 on aggregate)
Fulham 2
Sessegnon (47'), Odoi (66')
Derby County 0
(Fulham advance 2-1 on aggregate)
Final
Saturday, May 26, Wembley. Kick off 8pm (UAE)
Kill%20
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