Thomas Woods reflects on another week of English Premier League action and offers his thoughts on the biggest talking points.
Liverpool’s Champions League hopes rest on Sturridge
Liverpool have gone from goal kings to goal shy in the space of a season. One reason is the loss of Luis Suarez to Barcelona but another factor has been the absence of Daniel Sturridge through injury for the past five months.
That’s 52 goals from 2013/14 missing from the first XI.
However, with Sturridge back, Brendan Rodgers’s side have an added dimension. It showed on Saturday when Sturridge came on in the second half against West Ham and the whole team seemed to come alive.
Raheem Sterling has done a fine job up front on his own, but with Sturridge leading the line Sterling can drop back into a supporting role in which he is far more dangerous. Rickie Lambert can become an impact substitute and Mario Balotelli … well who knows if he will start a game for Liverpool again.
Despite several woeful performances this season, Liverpool have a run of five victories in six league games and are only four points off a Champions League spot.
They have scored only 33 goals in 23 games, however, and that is the issue Sturridge should address – or Liverpool will miss the top four.
The next four games are key – Everton away, Tottenham at home, Southampton away and Manchester City at home.
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Ivory Coast revival is bad news for Manchester City
The champions haven’t won a game since Yaya Toure has been in Equatorial Guinea for the African Cup of Nations with his national team and they haven’t had the chance to see Wilfried Bony in action as he signed from Swansea and then joined up with the Ivory Coast.
The Ivorians, favourites to win the Cup of Nations, were awful at the start of the tournament and it looked like Toure and Bony would be returning home early, perhaps even in time for last Saturday’s game with Chelsea.
But something has clicked, Bony’s goals have put his country into the semi-finals and City could now be without the duo for the home game against Hull this coming Saturday.
A midweek trip to Stoke on February 11 will probably be too soon for Toure and Bony if they make it to the African final, on Sunday.
If City cannot beat struggling Hull at home then they probably do not deserve to be champions, but the Stoke match will worry them.
Stoke demolished Arsenal at the Britannia Stadium this season and City would love the physical presence of Toure and Bony for that match.
Looks like the blue side of Manchester will be DR Congo fans for Wednesday’s semi-final.
A very bad team is going to stay up
The fight to avoid relegation is tight. Three points separate the bottom four and Crystal Palace, in 13th place, are only four points from the drop zone.
Several teams are putting in a fine case to be relegated and if the Premier League decided to send five teams down this season, it would be fair enough.
Aston Villa haven’t won in eight games, haven’t scored in 600 minutes of football and have only 11 goals this season.
Burnley took 11 matches this season before they won a game.
Hull have gone goalless in seven of their past nine matches.
QPR have lost all of their away games this season and are on track to set a record for the fewest points on the road.
Yet none of these teams are even bottom of the league. That honour goes to Leicester who have been there since a run of six successive defeats started in November.
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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.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Kandahar
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Stars: Gerard Butler, Navid Negahban, Ali Fazal
Rating: 2.5/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Haltia.ai
Started: 2023
Co-founders: Arto Bendiken and Talal Thabet
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: AI
Number of employees: 41
Funding: About $1.7 million
Investors: Self, family and friends
KEY DATES IN AMAZON'S HISTORY
July 5, 1994: Jeff Bezos founds Cadabra Inc, which would later be renamed to Amazon.com, because his lawyer misheard the name as 'cadaver'. In its earliest days, the bookstore operated out of a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington
July 16, 1995: Amazon formally opens as an online bookseller. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought becomes the first item sold on Amazon
1997: Amazon goes public at $18 a share, which has grown about 1,000 per cent at present. Its highest closing price was $197.85 on June 27, 2024
1998: Amazon acquires IMDb, its first major acquisition. It also starts selling CDs and DVDs
2000: Amazon Marketplace opens, allowing people to sell items on the website
2002: Amazon forms what would become Amazon Web Services, opening the Amazon.com platform to all developers. The cloud unit would follow in 2006
2003: Amazon turns in an annual profit of $75 million, the first time it ended a year in the black
2005: Amazon Prime is introduced, its first-ever subscription service that offered US customers free two-day shipping for $79 a year
2006: Amazon Unbox is unveiled, the company's video service that would later morph into Amazon Instant Video and, ultimately, Amazon Video
2007: Amazon's first hardware product, the Kindle e-reader, is introduced; the Fire TV and Fire Phone would come in 2014. Grocery service Amazon Fresh is also started
2009: Amazon introduces Amazon Basics, its in-house label for a variety of products
2010: The foundations for Amazon Studios were laid. Its first original streaming content debuted in 2013
2011: The Amazon Appstore for Google's Android is launched. It is still unavailable on Apple's iOS
2014: The Amazon Echo is launched, a speaker that acts as a personal digital assistant powered by Alexa
2017: Amazon acquires Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, its biggest acquisition
2018: Amazon's market cap briefly crosses the $1 trillion mark, making it, at the time, only the third company to achieve that milestone
A QUIET PLACE
Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Rating: 4/5
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SERIES INFO
Afghanistan v Zimbabwe, Abu Dhabi Sunshine Series
All matches at the Zayed Cricket Stadium, Abu Dhabi
Test series
1st Test: Zimbabwe beat Afghanistan by 10 wickets
2nd Test: Wednesday, 10 March – Sunday, 14 March
Play starts at 9.30am
T20 series
1st T20I: Wednesday, 17 March
2nd T20I: Friday, 19 March
3rd T20I: Saturday, 20 March
TV
Supporters in the UAE can watch the matches on the Rabbithole channel on YouTube
