Joe Biden is set to become the first US president to recognise the mass atrocities perpetrated against Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide, coinciding with the 106th commemoration of the killings this Saturday.
A US official speaking on condition on anonymity told The National that Mr Biden will recognise the Armenian genocide in a statement on the anniversary of the massacres.
The New York Times was the first to report on Mr Biden's decision.
While former president Ronald Reagan made reference to the Armenian genocide in a statement on the Holocaust in 1981, none of Mr Biden's predecessors designated the atrocities – in which it is estimated about 1.5 million Armenian civilians were killed – as genocide.
Former US presidents have used terms such as “mass killings” or “atrocities” to ascribe the systematic death of Armenians during the First World War.
Mr Biden’s statement would for the first time the executive and legislative branches of the US government are aligned on the issue.
Congress overwhelmingly recognised the genocide in December 2019. Since then, members from both US parties have urged the White House to follow suit.
Last month, a group of 38 high-ranking senators called on Mr Biden to recognise the genocide. On Wednesday, 107 House members issued a letter asking Mr Biden to “clearly and directly recognise the Armenian Genocide in your April 24 statement".
Sources familiar with the decision process told The National that the State Department and the Pentagon were more reluctant than the White House in advocating it.
Fears of antagonising Turkey even further and risking US withdrawal plans from Afghanistan as well as trade relations were taken into account.
Mr Biden has not yet called his Turkish counterpart and tension continues to rise over Ankara's acquisition of the S-400 Russian missile system. This week, the US notified Turkey of its removal from the new F-35 multinational agreement.
The Biden administration, however, is leaning on Turkey to help in the Afghanistan troop withdrawal set for September 11 and in peace talks with the Taliban. Turkey will host an international peace conference for Afghanistan in mid May.
Ankara has long warned the US about the repercussions of any genocide recognition. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said this week that official recognition would “worsen ties”.
"If the United States wants to worsen ties, the decision is theirs," Mr Cavusoglu told the news site Haberturk.
However, 29 countries have already recognised the mass killings of Armenians as genocide, including Germany, Russia, Italy, Argentina, France and Canada.
For the White House, the decision was about Mr Biden’s commitment to human rights as an integral part of his foreign policy platform, support from Congress and a campaign pledge he made last April.
“If elected, I pledge to support a resolution recognising the Armenian genocide and will make universal human rights a top priority,” Mr Biden tweeted during the presidential race.
But the administration is also bracing for backlash from Turkey, which could come in the form of a symbolic statement recognising the killings of Native Americans as genocide. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made that threat in 2019.
"The acknowledgement by a US president is long overdue and would be clearly consistent with the recognition of the genocide by both Houses of the US Congress in 2019," Ann Karagozian, director of The Promise Armenian Institute at the University of California - Los Angeles, told The National.
“It sends a clear message to the world about America’s enduring values: an acknowledgement of this organised attempt by a country to destroy its indigenous population, an acknowledgement of the wounds that are left festering even several generations after they took place and the message that human rights and historical truth trump political and, yes, even strategic considerations,” said Ms Karagozian, whose four grandparents emigrated to US to escape the killings.
Asked about the effect on US-Turkey relations, the expert saw a split between the leadership and many in the public.
“This recognition sends a message to the Turkish people, a substantial fraction of whom know about the genocide from their grandparents and other family members but are afraid to speak about it openly because it is illegal to do so in the Republic of Turkey.”
As for the leadership, the recognition would put Ankara “on notice that the world is watching,” she said.
Armenian groups such as the Armenian National Committee of America welcomed reports on Mr Biden's recognition and called it a "watershed for US policy, a tipping point for America towards the justice owed the Armenian nation, the security required of Armenia's future".
Company Fact Box
Company name/date started: Abwaab Technologies / September 2019
Founders: Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO. Hussein Alsarabi, co-founder and CTO
Based: Amman, Jordan
Sector: Education Technology
Size (employees/revenue): Total team size: 65. Full-time employees: 25. Revenue undisclosed
Stage: early-stage startup
Investors: Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, a London investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, among others.
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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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
