An opportunity for both reflection and revelry as DIFC turns 10

The Dubai International Financial Centre celebrates its first decade of existence this autumn and the celebrations will be something on a global scale.

Children’s 10th birthday parties, I know from experience, usually involve mini-discos and sleepovers in the case of girls, and something electronic and expensive for boys.

In the west, 10th wedding anniversaries involve the gift of something made from tin. I get this from Wikipedia, never having made that number personally in any of my nuptial forays (though there is still time.)

I doubt sleepovers, PlayStations or anything tinny will be on the agenda this coming November, however, when the Dubai International Financial Centre celebrates its first decade of existence. Knowing the DIFC, it will be something far more sophisticated, elaborate and precious than any of those.

That is right, this autumn it will be 10 years since the DIFC first stood upright, blinking and spindly legged, on the world financial stage. I was not around Dubai at the time, but old hands say it was something of a difficult birth.

Since then, of course, the centre has gone from strength to strength, so reaching the grand old age of 10 will be an occasion of enormous pride. But how to celebrate it?

Previous birthdays at DIFC have involved world famous opera singers, orchestras and other celebrities, and I am sure there will be plenty of that in evidence. And why not, now that the happy days are here again?

It will also, given the DIFC’s reputation as a hothouse of intellectual power, have to have a rather more cerebral element, with a legacy that will endure long after the last notes of the tribute band have faded away.

It will also have to be something on a global scale, acknowledging the DIFC’s position as one of the world’s most ambitious financial hubs.

The best minds of the Gate building are working on it right now. I have no idea what they will eventually go for, but it will, I am sure, be a stunning surprise.

Here is something that has been bugging me for years, but that has reached the stage of being a serious pain in the neck just in the past few weeks as the crisis has grown in eastern Ukraine: The total lack of sensitivity the BBC displays over advertising on its world news website.

Auntie Beeb has always been a bit slapdash with the commercial side of its business. The news “purists” think public service broadcasting, financed by the television licence fee all viewers in the United Kingdom must pay, is the most important thing.

The bean-counters, on the other hand, obviously feel they must make a buck or two whenever the opportunity arises, even (increasingly) in the most harrowing of news situations.

So in Ukraine, the BBC’s news hounds have been at the heart of an increasingly distressing and violent story, and filming as much of it as they can to put on the website as quickly as possible. Congratulations to them for their dedication and skill in such a difficult and dangerous environment.

But their clips are often preluded by a schmaltzy 30 second ad for a bank, or a big global multinational.

The incongruity of it all was brought home in a recent clip of a violent shoot-out at a police station in the Donetsk region, where a group of armed men poured automatic fire into a building. It was shocking in its ferocity.

Yet just a couple of seconds before the screen had been showing an ad for Shangri-La hotels with the catchphrase: “What is the greatest act of hospitality?” It is totally incongruous, and must, for the hotel company, be completely counterproductive.

Which company wants to have its product advertised along such awful scenes, however big the viewing figures?

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