MZAAR KFARDEBIANE // Seated around a table in the darkened Val d'Isère rental shop, at the foot of the Mzaar ski resort 50 kilometres north-east of Beirut, half-a-dozen employees smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and wait, futilely, for the snow to come.
Nearly a month into the ski season in Lebanon, at one of the most popular winter resorts in the Middle East, business has yet to begin. While Europe and North America have been pummelled with record snowfall and low temperatures in recent weeks, Lebanon has seen unusual highs and virtually none of the fluffy white stuff.
"It's very bad," said one employee, Rami Kai, 20, who studies business administration at Notre Dame University in nearby Zouk Mosbeh, when he is not working at Mzaar (formerly known as Faraya).
"There are other things to do here - we have ATVs, for example - but there are not a lot of people coming for that."
Temperatures in the mountains have reached the upper teens this January - not record highs, necessarily, but far too warm for snow to accumulate. Beirut too has experienced a decidedly summery month, with temperatures reaching into the high twenties.
Mr Kai and his co-workers were dressed, optimistically, in their uniform of red ski outfits.
Meanwhile, outside the shop, it had begun to rain. Across the empty car park, a high-speed chairlift was at a standstill, its chairs suspended over the rocky, brown terrain of the resort's lowest runs. Patches of snow could be spotted in the higher reaches of the mountain, remnants of a tantalising storm in late December that did not last.
Mr Kai's boss, Mike Geara, 27, explained that his 50 or so employees were still earning their salaries - about US$400 (Dh1,500) per month - but there was not much work to go around, and no tips to be had. Tips can amount to $100 per month.
"All of us lose money, let's be honest," Mr Geara said.
Mr Geara has worked at Mzaar for 12 years - for the remainder of the year he works as a dealer at Casino du Liban - and he has never before seen an entire holiday season pass without snow. "Usually, if the snow comes late - like, late late - we still have Christmas, we still have New Year's."
Marc Wehaibe, the head of Lebanon's meteorological service, said the past few years had witnessed a steady delay in the arrival and conclusion of Lebanon's rainy season, although total precipitation had remained within 30-year averages.
The effect of this delay on local businesses can be drastic, because businesses in the area tend to take in the plurality of their income during the three weeks surrounding Christmas.
According to Ronald Sayegh, the founder of SkiLeb.com, a website that arranges ski-holiday packages for all of Lebanon's resorts, bookings typically account for about 40 per cent of the season's earnings.
Virtually all were cancelled this year, he said, and so far most of January's have been as well.
"What are you going to do?" Mr Sayegh said, throwing up his hands. "I haven't seen this before, but you can't do anything. You just have to deal with it. We're totally helpless."
The mood was even gloomier at Mzaar operations headquarters. Christian Rizk, who runs the resort, said 35 per cent of the season's income was lost. "There's nothing we can do. The holiday is already gone."
To open, Mr Rizk said, the resort would need at least 50 centimetres of snow on the ground - two or three days of continuous, heavy downfall.
Mr Rizk, like the people at Val d'Isère, was continuing to employ the 200 or so people who run the mountain - chairlift operators, maintenance men, restaurant staff, ski patrol - but he was losing money fast.
Small businesses faced even greater challenges. At the family-run Hotel San Antonio, near the bottom of the village, the owner, Charbel Faddoul, had shuttered operations and moved his family into a small suite at the hotel, to save on expenses. Mr Faddoul took over the business, which had previously been owned by his father, nine months ago. Since then, he has put $340,000 into renovations, most of it out of his own pocket.
"Knowing you only do three months out of the whole year," Mr Faddoul said, "I've calculated I would need to make $755 per day to break even. And I've already lost a month and a half."
Mr Faddoul has continued to pay his small staff, but many of the locals who work at the mountain have not been so lucky. Tony Mhanna, one of Mr Faddoul's Lebanese employees, said his friends in Faraya, who work seasonally as ski instructors or at local restaurants, have had nothing to do, and no income.
"They're staying in the villages, waiting for the snow to come," he said.
Normally, these resort employees can earn the same amount of money in the winter months as they do as construction workers or mechanics over the course of the rest of the year, Mr Mhanna said.
"It's affecting everybody," Mr Faddoul said, "Starting from the beach up. Because you have only one road, only one motorway, to get here. As people go up, they stop at supermarkets, tyre shops, petrol stations - everybody is affected."
Wael Hmaidan, an environmental activist who runs the Beirut-based IndyACT, says this trend is only going to get worse.
"Eventually, if climate change continues the way it is, we're not going to have any snow," he says. "Our politicians have to take the issue seriously."
"We cannot say that each climactic event is due to climate change," Mr Hmaidan acknowledged. "But we do know that, probability-wise, this trend will be on the rise."
For Ronald Sayegh, one solution business-wise might lie in a venture he started recently, in partnership with SkiLeb: SkiDubai. The indoor ski slope at the Mall of the Emirates is open year-round, regardless of the weather, and is indifferent to climate change.
"We do have that alternative," he said with a shrug. "If you want."
* The National
Nayanthara: Beyond The Fairy Tale
Starring: Nayanthara, Vignesh Shivan, Radhika Sarathkumar, Nagarjuna Akkineni
Director: Amith Krishnan
Rating: 3.5/5
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
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.”
Baby Driver
Director: Edgar Wright
Starring: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx, Lily James
Three and a half stars
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
The%20specs
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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
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
SPECS
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The Buckingham Murders
Starring: Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ash Tandon, Prabhleen Sandhu
Director: Hansal Mehta
Rating: 4 / 5
