One person was killed and several injured when an earthquake struck the southern Greek island of Crete on Monday morning.
The quake sent people fleeing into the streets, while schools were evacuated. Repeated aftershocks rattled the area and local media reported damage in villages near the epicentre.
Residents in the area surrounding Heraklion, the island’s biggest city and capital, rushed from their houses after the earthquake.
Evangelia Christaki said she and her disabled husband had just enough time to evacuate their house as it shook.
“I grabbed my husband and we rushed out. Everything in the house was falling. Fortunately, our home was not too badly damaged. But the authorities have told us to stay outdoors over the next hours. In any case, we are so scared,” she said.
They were joined outside by her 96-year-old mother-in-law, whose home did collapse.
“The earthquake was strong and was long in duration,” said Heraklion mayor Vassilis Lambrinos. “We have requested that schools are evacuated. The children are out in the playgrounds.”
Greece’s Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Ministry said at least 11 people were injured.
“It's an earthquake that we did not expect. For the moment there are aftershocks of 4.5,” said Efthymis Lekkas, the head of Greece's earthquake protection agency, quoted by the AMNA news agency.
“We are urging people who live in damaged older buildings to remain outdoors. One aftershock can cause a collapse … we are talking about structures built before 1970. Structures built after 1985 are built to a higher standard that can withstand the effect of an earthquake.”
The National Observatory of Athens said the quake struck 346 kilometres south of the Greek capital and at a depth of 10km.
Spiros Georgiou, spokesman for the civil protection agency, said a man was killed in the farming town of Arkalochori when a small church collapsed.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) and the US Geological Survey gave a preliminary magnitude of 6.0, with an epicentre seven kilometres north of the village of Thrapsano.
It is common for different seismological institutes to give varying magnitudes for an earthquake in the initial hours and days after an event.
Civil protection officials said tents were being set up for residents whose homes had been damaged, with capacity for 2,500 people.
Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Christos Stylianides, who has arrived on Crete, said the government would help those who could not spend the night in their homes. Rooms in hotels may be provided.
The fire department said it was flying 30 members of its disaster response units with sniffer dogs and specialised rescue equipment to Crete.
“Those who were trapped have been transported to the hospital and are being treated,” said government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou.
Repeated lower-magnitude tremors followed the initial earthquake, adding to the destruction in villages near the epicentre where the walls of old stone buildings crumbled. The EMSC gave a preliminary magnitude of 4.6 for the strongest one.
Greece lies on a number of fault lines, and is sporadically hit by earthquakes.
The last deadly quake in the country took place on March 3 in the central town of Elassona, killing one person, injuring 10 and causing major damage.
On October 30 last year a magnitude-7.0 quake hit in the Aegean Sea between the Greek island of Samos and the city of Izmir in western Turkey.
Most of the damage was in Turkey where 114 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured.
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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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