ABU DHABI // When Iain Lawrie checked in for his Emirates flight on August 20, in addition to the clothes and sunscreen in his luggage, he was carrying a 50kg bag of rice and noodles.
He was flying to Karachi to oversee the delivery of 10 Zodiac boats for the flood rescue efforts ? and he needed to bring his own food.
"I brought about 50 kilos of rice and noodles as excess baggage on the plane, just in case," said the Dubai-based brokerage manager at ART Marine, a yacht-chartering company.
"We ended up eating some of it, because there was no food for us at the base we set up. We were giving all the food to the people."
Mr Lawrie had been approached by an anonymous Pakistani donor to co-ordinate the donation of the dinghies to the Aman Foundation, a Karachi charity.
On the 22nd, Mr Lawrie boarded a Pakistan air force cargo plane with a British crew of rescue specialists and the first shipment of five Zodiacs from Dubai. Their destination was Jacobabad, in the north of Sindh province.
A city of 500,000, Jacobabad has become a "ghost town", according to Pakistani press reports. With the area cut off by the floods, the only means of transport out is by boat.
According Mr Lawrie, the scope of the flooding was hard to comprehend without seeing it.
"There was so much water," he said. "We flew over it for 20, 30 minutes and all you saw was mass flooding, and then you land and it continued for hundreds of miles. Any direction you looked, you only saw high points."
Joining Mr Lawrie's team was a member of the Pakistani special forces, Commander Ali. He had been sent from Islamabad, where by his own account he spends his days "hunting Taliban", to Jacobabad to "baby-sit" Mr Lawrie and the rest of the rescuers.
The next afternoon the group set out to provide food, water and medical attention to people stranded by the floods.
The weather was brutal. "The heat index was 58C. I had factor 60 sun cream all over my face and arms, but my arms are still bubbling up with water blisters and the skin is peeling off. It was that hot."
Navigating through submerged towns in search of stranded people proved somewhat surreal, with only mosque towers and tall buildings visible above the water.
"We cruising under the high-tension power lines by two or three feet. I was navigating the dinghies by following submerged streets.
"We found many, many people stuck on the roofs of buildings. We passed a prison that was completely flooded under 18 to 20 feet of water.
"We ran into probably about 40 to 50 families in need of food and water all on roofs or stranded on pieces of road."
Not everyone could be helped, though.
"There were some areas where the people were quite angry. You could see them screaming and shouting ? it was quite scary.
"There were more than 50 to 100 people in those areas. We were told to drive past fast, because it was too dangerous to stop."
When night fell, the team returned to Jacobabad, but soon ran into trouble.
"We came to a wall in the first town. About a hundred people stood behind a barricade of rocks and burning tyres. They were trying to ambush us to get food from us."
Cmdr Ali and his fellow commandos dispersed the mob, and Mr Lawrie left for Karachi the next day to meet the latest shipment of his boats.
Now back in Dubai raising funds to send generators and well pumps to help in the reconstruction of the flood-hit areas, Mr Lawrie says he feels a sense of humility after his trip to Pakistan.
"In my profession, I sell yachts for up to 20, 30 million euros [Dh90m-140m]. All of a sudden I was thrown in with people who have less than nothing ? who are starving or drowning."
He was concerned to see severe bottlenecks in the distribution of relief supplies. The hangars at the air force base in Jacobabad are stuffed with food aid from around the world, but more comes in every day than gets out.
"They only have so many helicopters, so many boats and only so far they can go each day, it is difficult to disburse the supplies they were getting."
According to Mr Lawrie, there appeared to be too little co-ordination of rescue efforts. "It's chaos out there. You basically co-ordinate movements with your own connections."
@Email:smclain@thenational.ae
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
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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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The Bio
Favourite vegetable: “I really like the taste of the beetroot, the potatoes and the eggplant we are producing.”
Holiday destination: “I like Paris very much, it’s a city very close to my heart.”
Book: “Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. I am not a communist, but there are a lot of lessons for the capitalist system, if you let it get out of control, and humanity.”
Musician: “I like very much Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, and the other is Umm Kulthum. Fairuz is for listening to in the morning, Umm Kulthum for the night.”
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
PFA Team of the Year: David de Gea, Kyle Walker, Jan Vertonghen, Nicolas Otamendi, Marcos Alonso, David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, Christian Eriksen, Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah, Sergio Aguero
