More than 10 years have elapsed since David Rodgers was first part of Scotland's bid to utilise its environment for a wind power revolution in the north of the UK.
Back then Mr Rodgers was embroiled in a fierce legal battle with billionaire Donald Trump, who called the planned turbines "reckless monsters" that would ruin tourism at one of his Scottish golf resorts.
Now, in his role as chairman of the Aberdeen Renewables Energy Group, Mr Rodgers has a lot to smile about.
Despite Mr Trump's objections, the £150 million project went ahead and was merely the start of Aberdeen's ambitious green energy plans.
Mr Rodgers is now involved in making Aberdeen's dream of becoming Europe's renewables capital a reality.
"I've worked in the city for 35 years," he told The National.
"I started in the civil service and I have seen how things work from both the public and private sector. I went into the energy industry in 1993 and have had a close connection with the world of energy ever since.
"I was involved in Aberdeen's first offshore wind farm. It was a new concept for the city then.
"Now I get to see first-hand how Aberdeen is building on 50 years of oil and gas heritage with its innovations and achievements and how it is delivering them."
Mr Rodgers has been at the Cop26 climate summit this week in Glasgow to showcase the region's hard work.
"I'm really proud of Aberdeen and full of hope for the future. We have developed strong wind farm credentials and we got to share that with the world at Cop26," he said.
"We have 50 years of expertise in the oil and gas industry and the world needs these skills to create these type of developments.
"My time at Cop26 has been spent conveying the ambitions and the opportunities for the north-east in the future of energy transition and what we have to offer."
His visit coincides with a new report by KPMG which cited Aberdeen's wind farm potential as being the key to Europe meeting its net zero target by 2050.
The Oil and Gas Transition survey concluded that for Europe to reach climate neutrality by 2050, it will require offshore wind capacity to increase from 23 gigawatts today to up to 450 gigawatts, with half of this capacity to be installed in the North Sea.
Aberdeen has created the world's first floating wind farm and TotalEnergies announced that the city has been chosen as a global centre for its offshore wind operations.
"We need firms to transition to be able to go into the net-zero world," Mr Rodgers said.
"A lot of companies in north-east Scotland are developing projects and the supply chain is looking to see where they can play their part. We have world-class engineers here and subsea experts here.
"We represent more than 200 companies and we reflect the ambitions and activities in the area around net zero. We promote opportunities and help to link up our members with developers.
"It takes a lot of infrastructure to deliver these big projects on the ground and we have it."
While Mr Rodgers was sharing Aberdeen's green energy potential with the world, 50 miles away Mr Trump was hosting an international delegation from Indonesia for Cop26 at his flagship Turnberry hotel in Ayrshire.
He is famed for making the US the first nation in the world to pull out of the historic Paris Agreement, a move which has seen President Joe Biden rebuild bridges with world leaders at Cop26.
Had Mr Trump's long-running legal dispute with the Scottish Government over Aberdeen's wind farms been successful, the city's future as Europe's green energy capital could have been a different story.
He had claimed the turbines would ruin the view from his nearby Balmedie golf course, north of Aberdeen.
Mr Trump said of the scheme, which launched in 2018, “with the reckless installation of these monsters, you will single-handedly have done more damage to Scotland than virtually any event in Scottish history".
When he was asked to produce evidence, he replied that he was "the evidence".
“I am an expert in tourism, I am considered a world-class expert in tourism so when you say ‘where is the evidence?’ – I am the evidence.”
The wind farms were approved and Mr Trump spent years suing the Scottish government, taking his fight to the UK's highest court until his case was thrown out and he was ordered to pay the government £225,000.
On the edge of Scotland's west coast, his Turnberry hotel and golf course is three miles from another proposed wind farm, to which he also objected.
These so-called “monsters” off Aberdeen Bay are now permanent structures on its skyline, offering a lifeline of work and a future to thousands.
As Mr Rodgers relayed their potential at Cop26, he hopes the world will learn from the work Aberdeen is doing.
"Cop26 has been a tremendous gathering of world leaders and international government representatives," he said.
"The world is really watching for the blueprint of the planet that will emerge. I hope Aberdeen's work will play a part."
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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
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Analysis
Members of Syria's Alawite minority community face threat in their heartland after one of the deadliest days in country’s recent history. Read more
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
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.”
