Abu Dhabi Duty Free posts record Dh487.9 million first-half sales

Abu Dhabi Duty Free has posted record sales for the first six months of this year of almost Dh500,000.

The growth comes as new duty-free outlets selling goods including alcohol, cigarettes, perfumes, fashion and souvenirs opened, and as passenger traffic through Abu Dhabi International Airport likewise grew at a double-digit rate.

First-half sales at Abu Dhabi Duty Free advanced 11.5 per cent to Dh487.9 million this year from Dh437.6m last year, Abu Dhabi Airports, which owns Duty Free, said yesterday.

The number of Duty Free transactions in the period rose 12.8 per cent to just over 2 million, the parent company added.

During this year’s first six months, Abu Dhabi Duty Free opened two shops in Terminal 3, refurbished the souvenir outlets in Terminals 1 and 3 and started a perfume shop in Terminal 1.

“The continuing improvements and additions of new retail outlets at Abu Dhabi International Airport are clearly making their mark on the company’s commercial revenues,” said Abu Dhabi Airports’ chief commercial officer Mohammed Al Bulooki.

“Passengers here benefit from a wide array of shopping, food and beverages, and entertainment services that are available. It is very important that they are given the widest possible choice of activity when they are guests in the airport. And with passenger numbers increasing month by month, that requirement becomes more urgent.”

The gains in duty free sales also come amid efforts by the emirate to attract more tourists and transit passengers ahead of the completion of the Midfield Terminal building, which is expected, once open in the summer of 2017, to more than double capacity at the airport.

Passenger arrivals at the airport reached 1.7 million in July, the latest data from Abu Dhabi Airports showed. That figure represented a 21.7 per cent advance in traffic over the same month last year, the airport said.

Meanwhile, the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority said this week that hotel guest arrivals in the emirate were 26 per cent higher in July, with guest nights rising 20 per cent year on year and revenues increasing 14 per cent.

Abu Dhabi Airports said in yesterday’s statement that it had formally begun the tender process for retail and food and beverage concessions at the Midfield Terminal building, which it said is making rapid progress and will have an annual capacity of 30 million when it opens.

mkassem@thenational.ae

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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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