Lindsay Lohan is set to return to acting with a role in a 2021 Netflix Christmas romantic comedy.
The project is still untitled but, according to the streaming platform, Lohan, 34, will star as "a newly engaged hotel heiress who gets into an accident and, suffering from amnesia, finds herself in the care of a handsome lodge owner and his precocious daughter in the days leading up to Christmas".
The rest of the cast is yet to be announced, but the film has been written by Jeff Bonnett (Heroes), Janeen Damian (A Royal Christmas, The Christmas Waltz) and Michael Damian (Love by Design, Crown for Christmas).
In recent years, Netflix Originals have made a name for themselves in the holiday movie genre. The Christmas Chronicles, starring Kurt Russell, and the animation Klaus have become modern classics. The company also caters to the cheesy holiday movie market, with the A Christmas Prince trilogy, Holidate, Let It Snow and The Princess Switch, inspired by The Parent Trap, which starred Lohan.
The actress and singer, who has been living in Dubai since 2014, has stepped back from TV and film over the years. Most recently, she took on roles in the 2017 series Sick Note starring Rupert Grint, 2019 film Among the Shadows and has voiced a character in one episode of 2021 series Devil May Care.
Following the announcement of her Netflix Christmas special, Lohan is also set to play detective Mary Branigan in a new horror film Cursed.
On Saturday, Lohan shared a photo of herself during a photoshoot in the Dubai desert, with the caption: "The beginning of something."
In April 2020, Lohan spoke to David Spade about living in the UAE.
"So, I am in Dubai … kind of like the Wall Street area, it's like downtown," Lohan explained of her whereabouts to Spade on his show Lights Out with David Spade.
Spade saying he is yet to visit, asked: "So, Dubai is a place and that is in where?" To which Lohan replied, with a laugh: "The Middle East. It's a city built on desert.
“I first came here in 2008 when they just finished building the Atlantis [The Palm] hotel, and there was none of this here that there is now,” she said. “There was no DIFC, Downtown, The Dubai Mall … anything that there is now.”
Spade asked Lohan if she lives in Dubai, and she said she does, and had done for six years, at the time.
“I live here, I have been here for about six years. But I go to New York a lot to see my family … and I was in London before this,” she said. “I haven’t been to LA in over 10 years.
"The paparazzi definitely scared me a lot [in LA], but I haven't had any real reasons to [go back] recently," she said. "When I was doing the play, that was a while ago in London, and The Masked Singer is in Australia and recording I can pretty much do anywhere."
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Founders: Michele Ferrario, Nino Ulsamer and Freddy Lim
Started: established in 2016 and launched in July 2017
Based: Singapore, with offices in the UAE, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand
Sector: FinTech, wealth management
Initial investment: $500,000 in seed round 1 in 2016; $2.2m in seed round 2 in 2017; $5m in series A round in 2018; $12m in series B round in 2019; $16m in series C round in 2020 and $25m in series D round in 2021
Current staff: more than 160 employees
Stage: series D
Investors: EightRoads Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Sequoia Capital India
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Al Ain: Caio (5', 73'), El Shahat (10'), Berg (65'), Khalil (83'), Al Ahbabi (90' 2)
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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