LONDON // A "Tiger Woman" forced to protect her octogenarian husband from a plate of shaving foam amid suggestions that Britain is sliding into a banana republic. These are not the newspaper reports that David Cameron, the old Etonian prime minister, will have enjoyed reading yesterday.
The perception that Mr Cameron leads a country beset by downright incompetence, as well as age-old class division and political cronyism, was reinforced by the spectacle of police officers at one of the world's oldest parliaments being unable to prevent a protester thrusting a cream pie into the face of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
"It's embarrassing how far this country has fallen," said Susan Brett yesterday morning as she rushed to her accountancy job in the city. "I was riveted as much as anyone by the Murdoch family but there's a lot of work to be done to get this country out of a hole."
Mr Cameron, mired in slumping poll numbers and a fight for political survival, can only have admired the decisive, attacking slap delivered by Wendi Murdoch to her husband's attacker. Mrs Murdoch, a Chinese-born, 42-year-old former News Corp television executive, showed no hesitation to protect her husband as he and his son James testified on Tuesday to MPs. The parliamentary committee is investigating phone hacking, police bribery and other criminal behaviour apparently committed by a select group running Britain.
Mr Cameron has tried in vain to shift the news agenda to other topics that arguably do preoccupy British voters more, such as jobs and budget cuts. But his attempts to present himself as a national, not just party, leader worthy of a senior place on the international stage have run into trouble.
To many in the global audience watching Tuesday's grilling of the Murdochs, Britain "seemed a very small country indeed" that "should finally kill off any vestigial delusions that Britain is run to the ethical standards you might expect of a market trader, let alone a former empire," wrote a columnist in The Guardian.
The British parliament, after conducting a spirited questioning of Mr Cameron during an emergency session yesterday, now goes into summer recess until September 5 and so the prime minister may win some respite.
Thus far, the response of British voters to all the politicians seems to be: a plague on all your houses. No political leader has yet quit although a host of News Corp executives and high-ranking police officers have resigned.
More Britons are unhappy with how Mr Cameron is doing his job than at any point since he took office last May as head of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, according to a Reuters/Ipsos MORI poll released yesterday.
Of those asked, 53 per cent were dissatisfied with Mr Cameron, against 38 per cent who were content. His connections to Mr Murdoch and other News Corp executives had also left few rank-and-file Conservative politicians willing to defend the prime minister in public.
But Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour party, has yet to win a decisive boost despite his leading role in criticising Mr Cameron and the police and media misconduct that has been revealed in recent weeks.
Mr Miliband did not have close ties with News Corp, unlike his brother David, the former foreign secretary. Mr Cameron, meanwhile, met News Corp executives almost every two weeks during the last year, much more than any other news organisation.
It remained to be seen how the public would respond to Mr Miliband's performance in yesterday's debate. The Reuters poll, conducted last weekend, showed only 37 per cent of respondents were happy with him, against 44 per cent who were still dissatisfied.
The opinion poll seem to suggest that voters have not forgotten that Labour, when it was in government, appeared just as much in thrall to Mr Murdoch as did the Conservatives.
Although Mr Murdoch tightened his grip over the British media during the 1980s under the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Labour's Tony Blair was seen courting Mr Murdoch much more assiduously. The former Labour prime minister remains deeply unpopular, partly because of his support of the United States for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was loudly cheered on by Mr Murdoch's media.
Meanwhile, no matter how bad the situation gets for Mr Cameron, the Conservatives can still hope to benefit from a British media that are overwhelmingly to the right.
sdevi@thenational.ae.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
F1 drivers' standings
1. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes 281
2. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari 247
3. Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes 222
4. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull 177
5. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari 138
6. Max Verstappen, Red Bull 93
7. Sergio Perez, Force India 86
8. Esteban Ocon, Force India 56
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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Russia's Muslim Heartlands
Dominic Rubin, Oxford
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KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
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RESULT
Aston Villa 1
Samatta (41')
Manchester City 2
Aguero (20')
Rodri (30')
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
more from Janine di Giovanni
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.”
THE SPECS
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UAE tour of the Netherlands
UAE squad: Rohan Mustafa (captain), Shaiman Anwar, Ghulam Shabber, Mohammed Qasim, Rameez Shahzad, Mohammed Usman, Adnan Mufti, Chirag Suri, Ahmed Raza, Imran Haider, Mohammed Naveed, Amjad Javed, Zahoor Khan, Qadeer Ahmed
Fixtures: Monday, first 50-over match; Wednesday, second 50-over match; Thursday, third 50-over match