Honesty makes future orange

Blunt manners, a willingness to adapt to local surroundings and the love of adventurous, attacking football make Dutch coaches favourites around the world. The qualifying tournament for next year's World Cup has seen five Dutch coaches in action. Two - Australia's Pim Verbeek and Bert van Marwijk back home in Holland - have already helped their teams to secure places in the finals. Guus Hiddink has taken Russia to the European play-offs for a place in South Africa while Erwin Koeman's Hungary and Mart Nooij's Mozambique are coming to accept that they will not make it to the 32-team finals. Several Dutch coaches are training clubs abroad, including Louis van Gaal at Germany's Bayern Munich, Frank Rijkaard at Turkey's Galatasaray and Arie Haan at China's Chongqing.

A Dutch tendency to be outspoken and direct is one of the traits valued by clubs and national teams, according to Alfons van Marrewijk, professor in business anthropology at VU University Amsterdam. "This bluntness is normally almost seen as offensive, but in this context it is perceived as honesty, which is appreciated. It allows a coach to tell a player he is not performing well," Van Marrewijk said. "There is a sensibility to learn the language and adapt quickly to the morals of a country. Then they will introduce a different way of playing."

Hiddink led South Korea to the 2002 World Cup semi-finals. He has been Russia's coach since 2006 and is known as "Tsar Hiddink" in the country, which reached the European Championship semi- finals last year. "We started training hard with some different methods than they were used to. At the start, all the guys were sweating heavily all over but the beginning and end tests showed everyone made tremendous progress in three weeks," Hiddink said last year when Russia were preparing for Euro 2008.

Adapting to local culture is equally important. Verbeek sang Australia's national anthem live on television after they qualified for the 2010 World Cup, while Van Gaal dressed up in Lederhosen to join in Munich's annual Oktoberfest this month. Holland, where football is the No 1 team sport, rose to prominence as a footballing nation in the 1970s, when the team reached the World Cup final against West Germany under the leadership of coach Rinus Michels and captain Johan Cruyff in 1974. They won the European Championship in 1988, again led by Michels.

Currently, the team are third in the Fifa world rankings, behind Brazil and Spain. The football style created by Michels, dubbed "total football", focused on quick moves and the versatility of players' positions on the field, and was epitomised by Cruyff. "Our teams have played in a different way since then - looking for attacks, being creative, trying to dominate the game," said Remy Reynierse, who teaches coaches at the Dutch national football association (KNVB).

The KNVB also promote football internationally, receiving coaches from abroad and giving courses in European and African countries. With a large number of professional coaches and a limited number of clubs at home, many Dutch coaches move abroad, helped by the KNVB's network. Dutch coaches tend to pay little attention to a player's status or reputation, preferring to focus on team participation, according to Reynierse.

"A Dutch coach sits down and asks: 'What do you think we should do?' That's something players are not used to abroad. We want to make everyone involved." Of course, not every Dutch coach succeeds abroad. Leo Beenhakker helped Trinidad & Tobago become the smallest country to qualify for a World Cup in 2002, but last month he was sacked by Poland after the country failed to qualify for the World Cup, while Kazakhstan fired Arno Pijpers last year.

Belgium, however, turned to Dutchman Dick Advocaat after failing to qualify for South Africa, asking him to start his role three months early to begin preparations for the 2012 European Championship. The status and success of Dutch players and coaches abroad, from Cruyff to Rijkaard, from Dennis Bergkamp to Hiddink, continues to convince foreign teams to hire Dutch talent, Van Marrewijk said. "The orange team has a very big name. Abroad, you can always start a conversation about Cruyff. Dutch soccer is well known; it's like a brand which sells itself and the trainers."

* Reuters

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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.”