A cargo vessel carrying Ukrainian grain to China was refloated after running aground in the Suez Canal on Monday.
The MV Glory ran aground while joining a southbound convoy in Egypt, canal services firm Leth said.
Four of the Suez Canal Authority's strongest tug boats were used to pull the ship out of its position and refloat it, a statement from the authority's chief Admiral Osama Rabie said.
The brief stranding revived memories of March 2021 when the Ever Given, a ship weighing nearly 200,000 tonnes, ran aground in the canal, nearly causing a regional shipping crisis until it was refloated. The canal has since been expanded.
Admiral Rabie confirmed that it was not a serious incident and that the ship would now be tugged to “kilometre 51" of the canal to clear the waterway's backlog of delayed vessels. The 161km waterway was recently widened in the stretch between 51km and 122km, allowing safer passage for larger vessels. Admiral Rabie said it would receive repairs and be on its way.
“Maritime traffic through the canal is back to normal,” he said. “We dealt professionally with the motor malfunction of the Glory's machinery that happened during its transit through the canal.”
The ship, a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier reportedly carrying more than 65,000 tonnes of corn from Ukraine bound for China, will be escorted on its journey out of the canal by several canal guides, Admiral Rabie confirmed.
It was stuck in a single-lane stretch of the Suez Canal just south of Port Said, according to satellite data analysed by AP. It was not immediately clear what caused the vessel to run aground.
An Egyptian salvage officer on one of the tugboats involved in the rescue told The National that a motor malfunction occurred. This brought the ship to a stop after which it drifted and ran aground in “kilometre 39" of the canal.
The officer, who preferred to remain anonymous, said the ship had been allocated the number four position in the queue in the morning, resulting in a backlog of 19 other ships between Port Said and where the MV Glory ran aground.
Leth said it ran aground near the city of El Qantara, in Ismailia province.
The MV Glory was reportedly inspected on January 3 by the Joint Co-ordination Centre, which monitors the UN-brokered grain shipments and includes Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and UN staffers.
The Suez Canal is a vital waterway through which about 10 per cent of global trade is transported and is a major source of revenue for Egypt, which is facing a worsening financial crisis.
Two convoys transit through the canal every day, one northbound to the Mediterranean and the other southbound to the Red Sea.
In 2021, the canal was blocked for six days when the Ever Given ran aground, leaving hundreds of ships stuck and holding up $9 billion of global trade each day.
According to shipping website Marine Traffic, the MV Glory has a deadweight tonnage — the carrying capacity of the ship, including fuel — of 162,804 tonnes. The Ever Given's deadweight tonnage was around 181,097 tonnes, meaning that if fully laden, the MV Glory is about 89 per cent as heavy as the behemoth that blocked the shipping lane in March 2021.
It is not the first time a ship carrying Ukrainian grain has halted traffic.
A ship carrying more than 3,000 tonnes of corn from the war-torn nation ran aground in Istanbul in September, halting traffic on the Bosphorus Strait, which was hit by a tanker logjam last month.
The Suez Canal was briefly blocked again last year when another tanker ran aground, becoming wedged in a single-lane stretch of the canal.
More than 25,000 vessels went through the canal last year, bringing in nearly $8 billion in revenue — a 25 per cent increase from 2021.
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A skilled worker would be someone at a professional level (levels 1 – 5) which includes managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals, clerical support workers, and service and sales workers.
The worker must also have an attested educational certificate higher than secondary or an equivalent certification, and earn a monthly salary of at least Dh4,000.
Uefa Nations League: How it works
The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.
The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.
Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.
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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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