As the Fifa World Cup kicks off in Qatar, diehard football fans in Iraq are gathering at cafes and open spaces to watch the games, enjoying free access to live streams and nice weather.
A privately owned internet provider has the football covered in Baghdad after setting up a giant screen in an open space to show all games. Cafes across the country are also packed with fans.
At the courtyard of the city's Town Centre Mall in the upscale commercial hub of Mansour, Iraqis are enjoying the games in temperatures around the 20ºC mark – down from the blistering summer heat usually associated with a summer World Cup.
It is the first World Cup to be held in the Arab world and the second held entirely in Asia after the 2002 tournament in South Korea and Japan.
The championship, which started on Sunday, ends on December 18.
Uniformed waiters briskly navigated the packed fan zone set up by Earthlink, serving the fans food, drinks and shisha.
Nearby, a man distributed tickets to a sweepstake for the winning team in the tournament, offering tablets and computers for the winners. The tickets offered for free as a promotion for an app for online learning.
Young people and families sat on fluffy bean bag chairs littered around the screen, with some huddled over wooden and metal tables from nearby cafes and restaurants.
“The atmosphere is amazing and the weather is fabulous,” Abdullah Al Qaisi, a 25-year-old construction contractor, told The National.
“I feel very proud to see an Arab country hosting the World Cup. It’s a success for all Arab countries and hopes one day Iraq will be able to host the tournament.”
The atmosphere among the fans was quiet during the subdued first half of the Senegal-Netherlands match.
But it changed in the second half, as Mr Al Qaisi and other fans held their breath when the teams started to push deeper.
Cody Gakpo opened the scoring for the Netherlands in the 84th minute with a header at the end of a brilliantly timed run. Substitute Davy Klaassen scored in the 99th minute.
The fan zone offers construction worker Abbas Salam from Baghdad's Jihad area a chance to enjoy the games. He arrived with his two friends.
“We can’t afford to pay the [private] encrypted channels to watch the matches,” said Mr Salam, 16, as he was putting a tick mark under the Brazil flag in the raffle.
Football is Iraq's most popular sport, followed by basketball and swimming, a poll for the Independent Institute of Administration and Civil Society Studies research group in Iraq found.
Around 77 per cent of Iraqis say they are following the World Cup tournament matches, with Argentina topping the list of teams supported by Iraqis, followed by Brazil and Qatar.
Iraq did not qualify for the 2022 Fifa World Cup after losing to Iran 1-0 in June.
However, Iraq will host the eight-team Arabian Gulf football tournament in January for the first time since 1979.
The 25th Gulf Cup will be held in the southern city of Basra from January 6 to 19, when Iraq will be joined by Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen.
Many Iraqis see it as a sign of their country's recovery after years of conflict, political and economic crises and uneasy relations with Gulf neighbours.
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Title: General Practitioner with a speciality in cardiology
Previous jobs: Worked in well-known hospitals Jaslok and Breach Candy in Mumbai, India
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How it all began: opened his first clinic in Ajman in 1993
Family: a 90-year-old mother, wife and two daughters
Remembers a time when medicines from India were purchased per kilo
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Rating: 4.5/5
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Robo-advisers use an online sign-up process to gauge an investor’s risk tolerance by feeding information such as their age, income, saving goals and investment history into an algorithm, which then assigns them an investment portfolio, ranging from more conservative to higher risk ones.
These portfolios are made up of exchange traded funds (ETFs) with exposure to indices such as US and global equities, fixed-income products like bonds, though exposure to real estate, commodity ETFs or gold is also possible.
Investing in ETFs allows robo-advisers to offer fees far lower than traditional investments, such as actively managed mutual funds bought through a bank or broker. Investors can buy ETFs directly via a brokerage, but with robo-advisers they benefit from investment portfolios matched to their risk tolerance as well as being user friendly.
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MATCH INFO
Manchester City 1 Chelsea 0
De Bruyne (70')
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New UK refugee system
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- To encourage refugees to integrate the government will encourage them to out of the core protection route wherever possible.
- Under core protection there will be no automatic right to family reunion
- Refugees will have a reduced right to public funds
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Their favourite food: Khaleeji
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Their favorite quote: ‘we rise by lifting others’ by Robert Ingersoll
Company profile
Name: Dukkantek
Started: January 2021
Founders: Sanad Yaghi, Ali Al Sayegh and Shadi Joulani
Based: UAE
Number of employees: 140
Sector: B2B Vertical SaaS(software as a service)
Investment: $5.2 million
Funding stage: Seed round
Investors: Global Founders Capital, Colle Capital Partners, Wamda Capital, Plug and Play, Comma Capital, Nowais Capital, Annex Investments and AMK Investment Office
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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Rating: 5/5
Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
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