Cairo // Gunmen killed eight civilians, including a child, in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula where the army is battling an insurgency, security forces said on Thursday as assailants shot at a church near Cairo setting off a gunbattle with police.
Despite concerns about rising militancy in Egypt, following suspicions that ISIL-affiliated militants planted a bomb that downed a Russian plane over Sinai, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has expressed full confidence in Egypt’s security.
No one was killed in Thursday’s church attack but police guarding the premises near the Giza pyramids were left with scrapes and bruises, Egypt’s Mena news agency said. The three attackers escaped after the firefight.
On Wednesday night, unidentified armed men shot and killed seven men and a four-year-old child in their home in El Arish in North Sinai.
The victims, who were from the town of Rafah on the border with the Gaza Strip, had been killed for cooperating with the security forces, a security official said.
Egypt’s affiliate of the ISIL extremist group previously claimed to have executed several Sinai inhabitants that it accused of being informants for the security forces.
The extremists also claimed to have downed the Russian Metrojet A321 plane over the Sinai on October 31, killing all 224 people on board the plane that was leaving Sharm El Sheikh for St Petersburg.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has expressed “full confidence” in Egyptian security measures, ordering Riyadh’s national airline to continue flights to Sharm El Sheikh despite suspicions a bomb downed the Russian airliner.
An ally of Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah El Sisi, the king “directed Saudi Arabian Airlines to continue running flights to Sharm El Sheikh from Riyadh and Jeddah in support of tourism in the Arab Republic of Egypt”, the Saudi press agency reported on Thursday.
“The king stressed full confidence in Egyptian security, army and government,” it said.
Mr El Sisi has promised a transparent probe and cautioned against hasty conclusions over what brought down the Metrojet Airbus A321.
ISIL’s Sinai branch claimed responsibility but has not explained how it carried out the attack.
Britain suspended flights to Sharm El Sheikh after saying it feared a bomb caused the disaster and voicing concerns over airport security at the Red Sea resort.
Russia also halted all fights to Egypt.
Egypt’s tourism industry, vital to its economy, has already suffered from years of political instability and attacks claimed by extremists.
Saudi Arabia has offered billions of dollars in aid to Egypt since 2013. Mr El Sisi was in Riyadh this week for a summit of Arab and South American states.
During his visit, ministers from the two countries signed a document to create a council for implementing the so-called Cairo declaration agreed to in late July.
The declaration aims to boost military and economic ties.* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
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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.”
