Jail for Dubai lifeguard whose negligence failed to prevent death of hotel guest



DUBAI // A lifeguard who left a hotel pool unattended for 15 minutes and returned to find a guest drowning at the bottom of the pool has been sentenced to one month in prison and fined Dh2,000.

RP, 31, a Filipino, said he left the pool at the Country Club Hotel to get more towels, but when he returned two children informed him a swimmer was lying motionless on the bottom of the pool.

He dived in and fished the man out and tried to resuscitate him but was unsuccessful. The swimmer was taken to Rashid Hospital and placed in Intensive Care but died two days later.

Prosecutors said the incident took place on July 22 last year. The lifeguard said he returned to the pool at about 10.30am when the children approached.

AR, 14, from Belgium, and his brother, 11, reported the accident. They saw the man swimming in the pool before climbing out. "About a minute later he dived back in, but he did not come up again and just remained on the bottom motionless," recalled the elder brother.

They found the lifeguard and told him what had happened.

"The two kids told me a man had remained on the bottom of the pool for nearly two minutes, so I hurried to the pool, jumped and pulled him out," recalled the lifeguard. He then tried to resuscitate the man while his colleague called an ambulance.

He said he had seen the man - Ignatius Joseph, 38, from India - at the pool before and that he appeared to be a strong swimmer, adding that "I left for only 15 minutes."

The swimmer and his wife, CK, 34, had been living in the country for the past ten years. "We had a membership to the swimming pool but only my husband used it. He went to swim because he was feeling depressed because he had recently been made unemployed," said the widow.

She said her husband suffered from diabetes but rarely took his medicine, insisting he would use sport to keep the condition under control. He learnt to swim about a month before his death.

His widow told the court she did not think there was any negligence by hotel staff and that she assumed her husband had suffered a heart attack.

The Misdemeanours Court found the lifeguard guilty on a charge of causing death.

The lifeguard will be deported after serving his jail term.

salamir@thenational.ae

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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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Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
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