Gloucester rugby director David Humphreys hailed a stunning turnaround in form by his team after they beat Premiership title contenders Exeter Chiefs 16-9 at Kingsholm.
Just six days after suffering a European Challenge Cup quarter-final home defeat against PRO12 strugglers Newport Gwent Dragons, Gloucester halted a run of four successive Premiership losses by silencing the Chiefs.
“The players turned up tonight and produced an outstanding performance,” Humphreys said. “It was almost from the depths of despair last weekend to today.
“It (inconsistency) is not necessarily a conundrum that is this year or last year, it is a conundrum that has been here for many years.
“Two weeks ago, we should have won at Welford Road against Leicester; this week, we beat the second-placed team in the league; last week, we played a team that had lost seven or eight games in a row – and that is no disrespect to the Dragons – and we just didn’t turn up.
“The challenge for us as a management team is to go away and find why is that, and then once we find the why, how do we fix it? That’s the biggest challenge.
“We know how good this team can be. We know it is not a major rugby issue, but there is something that was missing against Worcester, London Irish and the Dragons. I would love to have an answer.”
England Under-20 international Ollie Thorley – a late inclusion in the Gloucester side for his Premiership debut – scored the game’s solitary try as his team prevailed, while Scotland international scrum-half Greig Laidlaw kicked three penalties and a conversion.
Exeter fly-half Gareth Steenson kicked three penalties for the Chiefs, who also saw their England wing Jack Nowell sin-binned for a dangerous tip tackle.
Referee Craig Maxwell-Keys consulted the television match official before reaching for a yellow card, when many in a crowd of just over 13,000 at Kingsholm expected red. Whether the match citing commissioner now gets involved remains to be seen.
Victory for Exeter would have been enough to guarantee play-off rugby next month and, while they should still comfortably secure a top four finish, their first opportunity of achieving that disappeared following last Saturday’s dramatic European Champions Cup quarter-final loss against Wasps.
Exeter head coach Rob Baxter said: “We got ourselves emotionally and physically into a pretty good place after last week.
“We did pretty well for the whole of the game, but we were massively undone by a period of ill-discipline under relatively little pressure, which is the thing that has annoyed me.
“In a game like today, it was almost certainly going to come down to penalty shots at goal. Gloucester got them and we didn’t.
“It is difficult to break it down straight after the game, but when we needed to show that bit more discipline and composure we didn’t. Gloucester won two or three battles tonight that were important.
“Sometimes games away from home in those kind of (wet) conditions, they do come down to one or two things. Discipline was the area that disappointed me most, and when you give up penalties it just kills you on a night like this. With a goalkicker like Greig Laidlaw, you are going to suffer.
“If we want to be a top four side and a good team in Europe, then you go from a quarter-final to a crunch Premiership game, then another crunch Premiership game, then a semi-final. That’s how they roll, and you have got to be able to deal with that.
“You can’t really control the odd handling error in a lot of ways, but when you go penalty, penalty, penalty, that’s something you should be able to control, and we didn’t.”
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Sri Lanka-India Test series schedule
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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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