Mercedes duel
It seems daft to put heavy emphasis on what is only the fifth round of a 19-race season but Nico Rosberg must win in Barcelona.
Mercedes-GP teammate Lewis Hamilton is on a roll, having won the past three races, and Rosberg must stop that momentum.
The Mercedes cars are in a class of their own at Circuit de la Cataluyna, as with everywhere else thus far, and it is becoming increasingly clear it will be either Hamilton or Rosberg who will win this championship.
Rosberg looked quicker for much of Saturday, topping the times in final practice and then the first two parts of qualifying but when it counted at the end it was Hamilton who put the fastest lap together to start on pole.
Rosberg is optimistic he has a good car set-up for the race, while Hamilton was more wary of the consistency of performance of his car.
But Rosberg must exploit that, if this turns out to be the case. He was faster in Bahrain, but did not win, and that was worrying.
If you triumph when you are not at your best, as Hamilton did in Sakhir at his teammate’s expense, that is the kind of thing that bodes well for championships to be won.
Rosberg is only four points clear in the standings because of Hamilton’s non-finish in Australia and he will lose that advantage if he is defeated by Hamilton again, so expect a tenacious performance from the German to try to prevent that.
Challenge for Vettel
Surprisingly for a man who has dominated Formula One so much in the past four years, Sebastian Vettel has never started the Spanish Grand Prix from pole position. That run was never going to be broken this weekend, given the speed of the Mercedes, but the world champion would have expected to have been on the second row had it not been for the gearbox problem that forced him to stop in the top-10 shoot-out in qualifying.
He lines up in 15th after Red Bull Racing needed to change his gearbox, causing a five-place grid penalty. The good news is the Red Bull car is the second fastest package in Barcelona so he should make up places in the race, though the difficulty of overtaking means a good strategy will be needed if he is to score good points.
The problem for the German is that teammate Daniel Ricciardo lines up third, and looks set to increase his run of good form and results over Vettel, having beaten him in the past two races in Bahrain and China.
Barring a problem for the Australian it is difficult to see Vettel getting near him, which will not improve his already grumpy mood.
Ferrari woe
On paper it was quite the coup for Kimi Raikkonen as he became the first man to out-qualify Fernando Alonso at the Spaniard’s home race in Barcelona since Jarno Trulli achieved the feat in 2004.
But in reality there was little for either Ferrari man to be cheery about, finishing sixth and seventh, but a resounding 1.9 seconds off pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton’s fastest time – a gigantic margin by modern F1 standards.
This was not what Alonso was dreaming of for his home race, and though you can be assured he will wring the maximum out of the Ferrari in the 66-lap race, fourth place looks his best hope, given the speed of the two Mercedes cars and Ricciardo.
But the qualifying deficit is the clearest sign yet of just how far off the pace Ferrari are, and right now, the chances of winning just one race in 2014, let alone challenging for the championship, looks remote for the Italian team.
Tight midfield
Excluding the two Mercedes cars, who are in a class of their own, qualifying was very competitive. Adrian Sutil, the Sauber driver, was 17th in the first part of qualifying and was the last driver eliminated from first qualifying.
But he was only six tenths off the third-quickest time in that session, set by Vettel, showing just how tight things were.
Expect a close duel for the final points positions, with Force India, McLaren, Lotus, Williams and Sauber all having genuine reasons for being optimistic of their chances of leaving Barcelona with their constructors’ championship standings having improved.
gcaygill@thenational.ae
Follow our sports coverage on Twitter @SprtNationalUAE
Kanye West
Ye — the rapper formerly known as Kanye West — has seen his net worth fall to $400 million in recent weeks. That’s a precipitous drop from Bloomberg’s estimates of $6.8 billion at the end of 2021.
Ye’s wealth plunged after business partners, including Adidas, severed ties with him on the back of anti-Semitic remarks earlier this year.
West’s present net worth derives from cash, his music, real estate and a stake in former wife Kim Kardashian’s shapewear firm, Skims.
PROFILE OF HALAN
Started: November 2017
Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport and logistics
Size: 150+ employees
Investment: approximately $8 million
Investors include: Singapore’s Battery Road Digital Holdings, Egypt’s Algebra Ventures, Uber co-founder and former CTO Oscar Salazar
Herc's Adventures
Developer: Big Ape Productions
Publisher: LucasArts
Console: PlayStation 1 & 5, Sega Saturn
Rating: 4/5
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
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Almouneer
Started: 2017
Founders: Dr Noha Khater and Rania Kadry
Based: Egypt
Number of staff: 120
Investment: Bootstrapped, with support from Insead and Egyptian government, seed round of
$3.6 million led by Global Ventures
The five pillars of Islam
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.”
