ADS thrives on gold and currencies


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Gold and currencies have proven more attractive propositions than languid stock markets for ADS Securities as the company has doubled trading volumes to as much as US$4 billion (Dh14.69bn) a day this year.

Since launching last year, ADS has increased its daily volumes of foreign exchange and bullion trades to between $3bn and $4bn per day - about double the amount registered in February.

"You felt the market needed a shock awake to get it back in the region," said Philippe Ghanem, the managing director of ADS. "ADS is like a constant shock to the market."

The increase in activity was being driven by an increase in the institutional clients, largely European and Asian banks, which have shunned investments in local equities.

Middle Eastern investors accounted for a large proportion of ADS volumes, in contrast to recent years when Gulf investors had sought to do business with big-name international banks and securities houses overseas, Mr Ghanem said.

But big institutional clients were generating the highest volumes for the trading house.

"ADS today generates a very large amount of volumes coming from the region and Asia, mostly because of investing abroad and trading abroad, but also investing and trading here," Mr Ghanem said.

In May, ADS announced it had signed up Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas to provide prime brokerage services on its trading platform. The company recently opened an office in London and is seeking regulatory approval from the UK Financial Services Authority to expand dealing there, while the company's staff has grown from 35 to 110.

Activity in equity trading has all but petered out in the UAE during the past few years, with volumes on the Dubai Financial Market a fraction of the peak in trading activity reached during 2007.

The value of the Dubai Financial Market General Index has fallen 78.1 per cent since the market's last peak before the financial crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

The slump was underscored on Thursday by the failure of the UAE and Qatar to secure an upgrade to "emerging-market" status from MSCI, the index provider.

About half of the UAE's brokerages have closed in the past year, while investment banks including HSBC Middle East, Rasmala Investment Bank and Shuaa Capital have been scaling back or closing their retail brokerage arms.

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While you're here
Gender equality in the workplace still 200 years away

It will take centuries to achieve gender parity in workplaces around the globe, according to a December report from the World Economic Forum.

The WEF study said there had been some improvements in wage equality in 2018 compared to 2017, when the global gender gap widened for the first time in a decade.

But it warned that these were offset by declining representation of women in politics, coupled with greater inequality in their access to health and education.

At current rates, the global gender gap across a range of areas will not close for another 108 years, while it is expected to take 202 years to close the workplace gap, WEF found.

The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracked disparities between the sexes in 149 countries across four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment.

After years of advances in education, health and political representation, women registered setbacks in all three areas this year, WEF said.

Only in the area of economic opportunity did the gender gap narrow somewhat, although there is not much to celebrate, with the global wage gap narrowing to nearly 51 per cent.

And the number of women in leadership roles has risen to 34 per cent globally, WEF said.

At the same time, the report showed there are now proportionately fewer women than men participating in the workforce, suggesting that automation is having a disproportionate impact on jobs traditionally performed by women.

And women are significantly under-represented in growing areas of employment that require science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills, WEF said.

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