TEHRAN // The head of Iranian Railways has resigned after four of his employees were arrested following a collision between two trains that left at least 44 people dead.
Mohsen Poor-Seyed Aghaie, a deputy minister in the transport ministry and head of the state-owned railway company, appeared on state television late on Saturday and announced his resignation “as a social responsibility and out of sympathy for the survivors of this accident”.
Two trains collided and one caught fire in the northern province of Semnan on Friday, killing 44 people and injuring dozens more, in one of the country’s worst ever rail disasters.
The crash took place on the main line between Tehran and Iran’s second city Mashhad.
One of the trains had stopped between the towns of Semnan and Damghan after an apparent mechanical failure, forcing officials to halt others on the line.
But when a new shift started at the control centre in Shahroud, the second train was allowed to resume its journey.
The accident happened due to “human error”, Mr Aghaie said, explaining that the official at the control centre had told the train driver to manually disable an automated system that was preventing it from moving toward the broken train.
Three in the control centre and the train driver were detained over the resulting crash.
The train driver “who had fled to a hideout” was arrested on Sunday, a local judge in Seman province told the judiciary-linked Mizan Online website.
“During the investigation, three people in charge of the northeast train control centre based in the city of Shahroud... were arrested,” provincial prosecutor general Heydar Asiabi told reporters.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered his condolences on Saturday for the “painful incident”, which came just a day after more than 60 Iranian pilgrims were killed in a suicide attack in Iraq.
* AFP
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Your rights as an employee
The government has taken an increasingly tough line against companies that fail to pay employees on time. Three years ago, the Cabinet passed a decree allowing the government to halt the granting of work permits to companies with wage backlogs.
The new measures passed by the Cabinet in 2016 were an update to the Wage Protection System, which is in place to track whether a company pays its employees on time or not.
If wages are 10 days late, the new measures kick in and the company is alerted it is in breach of labour rules. If wages remain unpaid for a total of 16 days, the authorities can cancel work permits, effectively shutting off operations. Fines of up to Dh5,000 per unpaid employee follow after 60 days.
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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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