Donald Trump backed his son, Donald Jr, and said that he had not heard about the latter's meeting with a Russian lawyer last June until a few days ago
Donald Trump backed his son, Donald Jr, and said that he had not heard about the latter's meeting with a Russian lawyer last June until a few days ago

Trump refuses to condemn son’s Russian meetings



WASHINGTON // United States president Donald Trump claimed that the first time he had heard of his son, Donald Jr, meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed she had politically troublesome information on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was a few days ago.

“No, that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this,” Trump said.

The president also told Reuters in a White House interview recorded on Wednesday that he had didn’t think that his son had done anything wrong by having the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya in June last year, right in the middle of the presidential race.

"I think many people would have held that meeting," he said, saying that in the heat of a campaign where the Republican candidate was making a virtue of his own outsider status it was sort of thing that could.

Trump Jr had convened the meeting with alacrity after he had been told that the woman, who worked for the Russian government as a legal counsel, might have emails that provided evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton.

Emails released by Trump Jr himself on Tuesday appeared to show that the president’s son knew the emails came with caveat that the Russian government was supporting his father’s candidacy, and that meeting with Veselnitskaya was a potential hostage to fortune.

The emails from Trump Jr now appear to form concrete evidence that the Trump campaign was willing to accept the help of a foreign state viewed with distrust by most members of Washington’s bureacracy.

The spectre of Russian influence on last November’s election has hung over the presidency since Trump was inaugurated in January and has prompted investigations by the U.S. Justice Department and Congress.

Donald Trump Jr, in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, said: "In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently."

But his father appeared to double down, saying that he had asked Russian president Vladimir Putin if he was involved in meddling in the presidential campaign during a two-hour meeting with at last week’s G20 summit in Hamburg, and that Putin had insisted he was not.

"I said, 'Did you do it?' And he said, 'No, I did not. Absolutely not.' I then asked him a second time in a totally different way. He said absolutely not," Trump said.

Pushed on whether the Russian could be believed, the president said: “Look. Something happened and we have to find out what it is, because we can’t allow a thing like that to happen to our election process. So something happened and we have to find out what it is."

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Winner: Secret Trade, Tadhg O’Shea, Ali Rashid Al Raihe.

10pm: Longines Moon Phase Master Collection Dh170,000 Handicap 2,000m.
Winner:

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Director: Laxman Utekar

Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna

Rating: 1/5

RESULT

Al Hilal 4 Persepolis 0
Khribin (31', 54', 89'), Al Shahrani 40'
Red card: Otayf (Al Hilal, 49')

Avengers: Endgame

Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Josh Brolin

4/5 stars 

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Other workplace saving schemes
  • The UAE government announced a retirement savings plan for private and free zone sector employees in 2023.
  • Dubai’s savings retirement scheme for foreign employees working in the emirate’s government and public sector came into effect in 2022.
  • National Bonds unveiled a Golden Pension Scheme in 2022 to help private-sector foreign employees with their financial planning.
  • In April 2021, Hayah Insurance unveiled a workplace savings plan to help UAE employees save for their retirement.
  • Lunate, an Abu Dhabi-based investment manager, has launched a fund that will allow UAE private companies to offer employees investment returns on end-of-service benefits.
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In numbers

Number of Chinese tourists coming to UAE in 2017 was... 1.3m

Alibaba’s new ‘Tech Town’  in Dubai is worth... $600m

China’s investment in the MIddle East in 2016 was... $29.5bn

The world’s most valuable start-up in 2018, TikTok, is valued at... $75bn

Boost to the UAE economy of 5G connectivity will be... $269bn 

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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.”