The mobile office: Stay at work in your car

In India, where private drivers are already a middle class staple, one man has created an entirely new category of executive wheels: the mobile office.

Indeed, the handiwork of Dilip Chhabria, an erstwhile GM engineer, is discreetly visible across India. His firm, DC Design, co-opts battered Toyota Highlanders and retrofits the interiors with amenities like Wi-Fi, touchscreen TVs, soundproofing, and airline pod-style seats expressly to answer one of the city’s biggest problems – traffic. Conveniently transformed, these SUVs now make short order of ever longer commutes, turning them into just another day at the (mobile) office.

Nowhere is more fertile a base for DC’s designs than Mumbai: private vehicle numbers there have risen 57 per cent in less than a decade, and by one estimate, 200 new cars join the traffic jam every day. While it’s typical of many of the nascent megatropolises in emerging markets, from Bangkok to Brazil, where the roadways are buckling after the economic boom, it’s also an issue in the US – just ask the California businessman Mark Hyman.

“I’m born and raised in California, and years ago traffic was predictable,” he explains “Now? It’s totally unpredictable, and you have to leave a minimum of two hours early to get to a meeting even close to on time.”

He tapped Howard Becker to address this, the owner of Beverly Hills-based Becker Auto Design. Since starting out 40 years ago customising cars with high-end stereos for celebrity clients, Mr Becker has moved into the mobile office space to become America’s premier car up-fitter.

It’s an increasingly lucrative market. According to the most recent figures from the traffic tracking firm Inrix, as GDP rises, mph falls. Traffic trends show congestion is worsening in urban centres where the tech sector is strong. That’s in addition to already-gridlocked cities like New York (53 hours wasted in traffic per year), Washington, DC (40 hours) and Mr Becker’s local market Los Angeles (60 hours).

“Even in the first world, the major metropolitan areas are all behind in infrastructure,” Mr Becker says. “What drives our business is the ability for our customers to get things done even when they’re driving. The red Ferrari is still in the garage for fun at weekends, but they’re thinking, at least on weekdays, ‘I can’t afford to drive myself any more.’”

Mr Becker offers two core mobile offices, one of which based off a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter that he has dubbed the JetVan. It can accommodate up to seven people like a truly (and luxurious) mobile conference room, or a cosier alternative hewn from a Cadillac Escalade ESV (although that, too, can be discreetly stretched to squeeze in four conference seats).

Most desk-bound execs would envy the in-motion amenities he offers: plush leather seats, fine wood inlays, blazing fast Wi-Fi, media systems with touchscreen menus offering live TV, video on demand, and local programming from any major city. You can even get a printer. “My clients can basically run most of their world, if not the world, from that position,” Mr Becker promises.

Each project begins with a consultation after which Mr Becker’s team will create a 3D animated walk-through of the customised fit-out. Often, his tech-savvy clients are keen to incorporate prototypes or beta test software on board, so Mr Becker works with a team of IT staffers to adapt it to a car.

His strangest request came from the chief executive of a New York Stock Exchange company who had moved the firm’s headquarters from one city to another but decided not to move house himself. The corporate relocation therefore added an hour to the executive’s commute each way, squeezing his daily routine so that exercise was almost impossible.

“He told me ‘I can’t imagine living without cardio – can you do an exercise thing for me?’” Mr Becker recalls. So the designer took a recumbent exercise bike and chopped it in half, replacing the standard seat with an alternative that was safety-certified for cars, then wedged the Frankenbike into the back of the SUV. “He could sit back there and pump his little heart out to his heart’s content and still wouldn’t go flying out if there was a front collision.”

The average project takes about seven months to complete and costs $250,000 to $450,000 for a Mercedes Sprinter refit.

Philip Daskal of Inkas, a Toronto-based firm, refitted a Sprinter for three-quarters of a million dollars for a celebrity businessman in the Philippines. (Mr Daskal estimates that emerging markets like India comprise more than 75 per cent of his business.)

“What could take 15 minutes to drive in North America, could take two to three hours in Manila, so it’s forever to get to places,” Mr Daskal recalls. So alongside the 50-inch flat screen, satellite phones and massage seats, came the client’s more practical requirement: a toilet. Inkas turned to the same kind of lightweight eco-friendly toilets common on high-end yachts, installing it at the rear complete with chrome sinks. “It even had its own exhaust, so the smell wouldn’t linger.”

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COMPANY PROFILE

Name: Kumulus Water

Started: 2021

Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid

Based: Tunisia

Sector: Water technology

Number of staff: 22

Investment raised: $4 million

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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?

The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.

Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.

New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.

“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.

The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.

The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.

Bloomberg

Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week

Clean water and solar homes: Zayed prize finalists present sustainability solutions

Youth take centre stage for this year's Zayed Sustainability Prize

What is the Zayed Sustainability Prize?

Key facilities

Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
Premier League-standard football pitch
400m Olympic running track
NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
600-seat auditorium
Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
Specialist robotics and science laboratories
AR and VR-enabled learning centres
Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills

THE BIO

Favourite car: Koenigsegg Agera RS or Renault Trezor concept car.

Favourite book: I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes or Red Notice by Bill Browder.

Biggest inspiration: My husband Nik. He really got me through a lot with his positivity.

Favourite holiday destination: Being at home in Australia, as I travel all over the world for work. It’s great to just hang out with my husband and family.

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.”