SHARJAH // When the final shell hits the ground and the smoke has cleared, someone will walk away with Dh30,000.
At the Sharjah Golf and Shooting Club, 20 of the country's sharpest shooters will be aiming for first prize tonight in the National Day 9mm Shooting Competition 2010.
Over two days last week, 53 mavericks tried their luck in the qualifying rounds. The top 20 made it through to tonight's final. The score to beat was 149 out of 180.
When Baiju Noorudeen, the competition's adjudicator, calls for the finalists to fill their magazines, the bulletproof shooting gallery will, for a minute, fall silent as the competitors load their weapons.
He will call them to attention, then count down from three. After a whistle, the game will be on. The competitors will cock their guns and clear their minds.
Among them will be Zainab Akhlaqi, a 33-year-old officer in the Sharjah Police. "When I see the target, I zone in on it," she said. "I then take a proper aim and put my finger on the trigger."
Holding her breath, she pulls the trigger. The piercing bang of the shot is stifled by earmuffs, but still registers a strong bass thud. The empty brass shell case ricochets off the wall and rolls across the floor.
She releases her breath and takes aim again. Ten seconds or so after the first shot, she fires her second. Under the bright fluorescent lights of the indoor range, she empties her six-shell clip in 90 seconds.
After each clip - each competitor shoots off four in total, including one for practice - the targets are drawn back in and changed.
Col Hassan al Shehhi at Sharjah Police, the head of the jury committee, decides on any close calls - if a hole is on the line between two scoring sections.
"The standard of Sharjah's shooting is high," he says. "Most of the shooters in Sharjah Police first graduated from here."
Last year, the men won the Ministry of Interior's shooting competition, with the women's squad coming in second.
Ms al Akhlaqi was one of two women who qualified last week for tonight's finals. Her colleague and friend, Raja Khalid, missed out by just one point.
Ms Khalid, a 26-year-old emergency nurse trainer in Sharjah Police, remembers the first time she shot a gun, a 9mm SIG Sauer, seven years ago. "I was shaking like hell," she says. "I thought, to myself, what was that?"
Now, she says, she practises all the time. "After the first time, it is really hard to let the feeling it gives you go."
Also, adds Ms al Akhlaqi, letting off a few rounds "is good for stress".
Ms Khalid said the right gun can make all the difference: "Sometimes when you change the gun, it's different. Every gun has its own target. When you change gun you never get a good score, especially when you change it on the day of the competition.
"Sometimes it is just about luck. But a lot of it is up here," she says, tapping her head.
eharnan@thenational.ae
Checks continue
A High Court judge issued an interim order on Friday suspending a decision by Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots to direct a stop to Brexit agri-food checks at Northern Ireland ports.
Mr Justice Colton said he was making the temporary direction until a judicial review of the minister's unilateral action this week to order a halt to port checks that are required under the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Civil servants have yet to implement the instruction, pending legal clarity on their obligations, and checks are continuing.
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.”
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
pakistan Test squad
Azhar Ali (capt), Shan Masood, Abid Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Asad Shafiq, Babar Azam, Fawad Alam, Haris Sohail, Imran Khan, Kashif Bhatti, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Naseem Shah, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Mohammad Abbas, Yasir Shah, Usman Shinwari
