Top seed and defending champion Novak Djokovic will take on second seed Andy Murray in Sunday's Paris Masters final in the latest instalment of their long rivalry.
In Saturday’s semis, Djokovic defeated Stan Wawrinka 6-3, 3-6, 6-0 for his 21st straight win dating back to August 23, while Murray edged past David Ferrer 6-4, 6-3.
Paris is the last of the nine Masters 1000 series for the season with Djokovic having already won five and Murray two.
The win over Wawrinka was sweet revenge for world No 1 Djokovic, who lost the French Open final to the Swiss star on the other side of Paris in June.
That prevented the 28-year-old Serb from completing his career haul of grand slam titles.
As he subsequently won the Wimbledon and US Open titles, having already wrapped up the Australian Open, it also stopped him from becoming just the third man, after Don Budge and Rod Laver, to win all four grand slam titles in the same year.
“Credit to Stan for playing a great second set and coming back, winning five games in a row, obviously serving more accurately, playing more powerful from the baseline back of the court, getting more balls back, and it worked for him. He played very well,” Djokovic said.
“But I still felt like I was hitting the ball well. With this kind of feeling and approach, I got to the third set and played the best set of the tournament so far.”
A break in the third game was enough for Djokovic to take the first set and, when he broke to lead 2-0 in the second, it looked like a straightforward win against a player who had finished a punishing quarter-final match against Rafael Nadal well after midnight and got to bed at 3.45 am.
But Wawrinka summoned up his last energies to run off five games in a row and level the set scores.
In so doing he put an end to Djokovic's superb set winning streak at 29, dating back to the second set of the US Open final against Roger Federer in early September.
A love service game for Djokovic to start the third set, however, reversed the momentum and Wawrinka visibly wilted, allowing the Serb to power into the final for the third straight year.
Wawrinka said that it had not so much been the late finish against Nadal that had left him drained, but more the “exhausting” nature of his win in two tough tie-breaks.
Earlier Murray defeated Ferrer to reach the Paris Masters final for the first time, having fallen five times at the quarter-final stage.
The two-time major winner blew hot and cold in a roller-coaster of a match, but in the end he had too much firepower for the veteran Spaniard, a winner in Paris in 2012 and finalist a year later.
“There were periods of the match that were a little bit physical, but I did feel like I dictated a lot of the points and I finished a lot of points up at the net and was able to shorten enough points to not make it too tiring,” said Murray, who had some back pain after his tough quarter-final win over Richard Gasquet.
Murray, whose end-of-season priority remains Britain’s Davis Cup final against Belgium in three weeks’ time, opened the stronger, but Ferrer erased an early break to level at 4-4.
The 28-year-old Scot then won eight successive points to lead 5-4 and served out comfortably to take the opening set.
Ferrer broke first in the second set to lead 3-1, but Murray promptly stepped up a gear to pocket the next five games and clinch his fourth Masters 1000 series final of the year, having won in Madrid and Montreal.
It was his most comprehensive win over Ferrer since a 6-2, 6-3 win in Tokyo in 2011 and moved him 11-6 clear in their head-to-heads.
Djokovic and Murray have played each other 29 times on the ATP Tour with Djokovic winning 20, and the Serb has won nine of their last 10 encounters, including their most recent matchup, a straight sets victory at the Shanghai Masters last month.
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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.”
