Great Travel News Syndicate

Abu Dhabi A seminar to improve the scholarship system in the UAE took place on Monday at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi.

Representatives from the Ministry of Education, several government entities, private industry and international scholars gathered to share experiences, discuss challenges and identify ways to improve the UAE’s scholarship system.

“Education and human development top the strategic priorities and are among the basic two pillars of vision 2021,” said Nasser Al Hameli, assistant undersecretary for the technical affairs office, at the Ministry of Presidential Affairs (MOPA).

The seminar is intended to synchronise and coordinate efforts, exchange information and best practices to improve the system and match the scholarships awarded to the UAE’s strategy, national needs and market demands.

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Dubai: The use of inappropriate fishing methods and illegal net sizes were the main causes behind the death of mackerel tuna in Dubai waters this week. Known as saddah, the fish were found dead in large numbers in waters west of Dubai.

Major General Mohammad Al Merri, chairman of the Fishermen’s Cooperative Association of Dubai, explained how the fish died and said that a similar incident had occurred off the coast of Umm Al Quwain too.

Al Merri explained that the incorrect use of a professional fishing technique, combined with the use of illegal net sizes, around four times larger than that allowed by the law — were the main reasons behind the death of the fish in Dubai.

The technique, Al Merri said, needs professional fishermen and is used worldwide without any problems. But because it is relatively new in the UAE — introduced only two years ago — only a few boats are authorised to use it, six boats in Dubai and two in Sharjah, he explained.

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LONDON (Reuters) – Private banks are telling their clients financial volatility surrounding Europe’s debt crisis will continue for at least a year as more of the continent’s rich seek the comfort of household names or state backing when choosing where to bank.

“We are telling (clients) very honestly nobody knows how this is going to evolve and you have to be extremely careful in terms of your exposure,” said Alexandre Zeller, head of private banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at HSBC.

Pierre de Weck, wealth management head at Deutsche Bank, said during the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit that clients could expect at least another 18 months of volatility.

“If you’re short term oriented and you cannot take pain, reduce risk because we are going to have a bumpy road over the next 18 months until this European sovereign crisis is resolved,” he said.

The market volatility since the summer and fears over bank solvency have boosted the kind of institution often shunned during boom times, on account of perceptions they are old fashioned or conservative, bankers said at the summit in Geneva this week

“It has been an accelerating factor in the last few weeks, we have observed a flight to safety. Banks with solid balance sheets, with conservative management and approach to the markets, are seeing significant inflows on a global scale,” said Zeller,

“If you look at it more locally, state guaranteed institutions are seeing significant inflows . part-nationalized banks or those with an implicit state guarantee,” he said.

James Fleming, head of the international business at Coutts, a division of part nationalized British lender Royal Bank of Scotland, tracing its origins back to 1692, said it had attracted clients in the crisis seeking comfort in its history.

“All the major financial booms and busts in last 320 years, we’ve navigated our clients through. And I think clients see that,” he said.

Yves Mirabaud, managing partner at Swiss bank Mirabaud & Cie, said the woes of large banking groups, most recently an alleged rogue trading scandal at Swiss giant UBS, was boosting the appeal of Switzerland’s family-run partnerships.

“I don’t know if the fact it is a family business is a selling point … (But) when you see how the big banks have behaved the past few years I believe that the model is stronger than ever,” he said.

(Reporting by Chris Vellacott; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)

NEW YORK Feb 27 (Reuters) – The International Swaps
and Derivatives Association, the arbiter of rules governing the
sale and use of credit default swaps, said on Monday
it will decide this week whether to discuss if Greece’s debt
swap should constitute a “credit event” and trigger a payout.

One of the major concerns about Greece’s debt restructuring
was whether the hard-fought agreement with private debt holders
would give Greek sovereign credit default swap investors a
justification for demanding payment on the protection they
bought.

The issue arises because an ISDA member asked the governing
body if last week’s approval by Greece’s Parliament to implement
collective actions clauses (CAC) on debt governed by Greek law
constitutes a so-called “restructuring credit event.”

At issue is the retroactive inclusion of CACs into sovereign
debt governed by Greek law. CACs force all bondholders to
proceed with a swap once it has won a specified level of
approval.

The ISDA member contends that not all bondholders are being
treated equally.

The question asks whether the Greek debt restructuring is a
“credit event” because it subordinates eligible bondholders to
the European Central Bank and other national central banks,
which hold sovereign debt governed by Greek law.

ISDA said in a statement it will make a decision on whether
to review the issue by 5 p.m. GMT on Wednesday.

Private investors holding about 200 billion euros of Greek
bonds will take a loss of 53.5 percent in the face value of
their holdings and a real loss of 73-74 percent.

Credit default swaps provide protection for an investor who
holds an underlying security that suffers from a default or
restructuring.

According to the new law, the swap will go ahead once 50
percent of bondholders have responded to the offer, and the CACs
will be activated once a two-thirds majority of that quorum has
voted in favor of the swap.

A credit event occurs, or is triggered, when there is either
a failure to pay, a repudiation/moratorium, or restructuring of
the underlying debt.

Also at issue is if the announcement results directly or
indirectly from a deterioration in the creditworthiness or
financial condition of Greece.

ISDA’s regional Determinations Committees discuss issues
involving credit events, CDS auctions, succession events and
other issues, with decisions governed by a set of internal
rules.

Take That's Gary Barlow and Andrew Lloyd Webber have announced they are to create a song together for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

The collaboration will be performed at the Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace on 4 June.

For inspiration, Barlow is to travel round the Commonwealth to discover what the Queen means to ordinary people.

"This is probably the biggest challenge I've ever taken on musically," Barlow said.

"I'm so excited and thrilled to be a part of it."

Barlow's journey, which will also explore the different musical cultures and traditions in the Commonwealth nations, will be the subject of an hour-long documentary for BBC One.

"It is a huge honour to be involved in this historic occasion and I am looking forward very much to working with Gary," Lord Lloyd Webber said.

'Join forces'

Speaking on Chris Evans' Radio 2 Breakfast Show, he explained how the collaboration came about.

"We both realised that there was a possibility that we would both be writing a song for the Jubilee to celebrate the Queen. I called Gary and said: 'Are you doing it because someone's talked to me about it?'

"And we thought it best to say we might join forces."

X Factor judge Barlow said he was hoping to find some "unique artist" from around the world, who could perform the track.

The Jubilee concert – which Barlow is helping to organise – has now attracted more than one million ticket applications.

Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Dame Shirley Bassey, Jessie J, Ed Sheeran and Sir Cliff Richard have all been signed up to perform.

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South Korea has developed into one of Asia's most affluent countries since partition in 1948. The Communist North has slipped into totalitarianism and poverty.

The Republic of Korea was proclaimed in August 1948 and received UN-backed support from the US after it was invaded by the North two years later.

The Korean War ended in 1953 without a peace agreement, leaving South Korea technically at war for more than fifty years.

The following four decades were marked by authoritarian rule. Government-sponsored schemes encouraged the growth of family-owned industrial conglomerates, known as "chaebol". Foremost among them were the Hyundai and Samsung groups.

They helped transform South Korea into one of the world's major economies and a leading exporter of cars and electronic goods.

Although the South Korean economy is now the third largest in Asia and the 13th in the world, the high levels of foreign debt held by the country's banks have left them exposed to the fallout from the global credit crisis.

A multi-party political system was restored in 1987, and President Roh Tae-Woo launched an anti-corruption campaign against both his own party and his political predecessor.

Relations with its northern neighbour remain a major concern in Seoul, particularly over the North's fragile economy and its nuclear ambitions. South Korea generally resisted international calls for sanctions against the North over its nuclear programme and pursued a "sunshine" policy of engagement in the late 1990s.

This has involved aid – including shipments of fertiliser and rice – reunions between North and South Koreans, tourist projects and economic cooperation. South Korean companies employed thousands of North Korean workers at the Kaesong industrial complex near the border.

The "sunshine" ended with the election in 2008 of conservative President Lee Myung-bak, who adopted a tougher tone towards the North in response to its failure to move on the nuclear issue.

Tensions were heightened further by a spate of Northern missile tests in 2009 and then by the sinking of the Southern naval ship Cheonan in March 2010, in which 46 sailors died.

After international investigators reported finding evidence that the Cheonan was sunk by a torpedo from a North Korean submarine, South Korea stopped all trade between the two states. Pyongyang rejected the claim as "fabrication" and retaliated by cutting all relations with Seoul.

A serious cross-border clash in November 2010, as a result of which the South Korean military was placed on its highest non-wartime alert, threatened to set relations back even further.

The demilitarised zone (DMZ) between South and North Korea is the world's most heavily-fortified frontier. But the US, which maintains tens of thousands of soldiers in South Korea, is pulling its forces away from the front line and plans to hand over wartime operational control to the South Korean military in April 2012.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Starved of credit, and facing a lack of deals and a new bout of indignation over executive pay, the private equity sector has one solace: returns continue to be better than those in stock markets.

Buy-out houses, which make a living buying and selling companies for profit, have agreed some $15.2 billion of deals so far in 2012, down 28 percent on last year.

They have found it hard to raise debt to fund deals, the fuel that drives the industry, and it is equally challenging to sell companies on the stock market, or to other large corporate rivals, who are sitting tight on their cash reserves.

But when the industry gets together in a plush hotel in historic heart of German capital Berlin, it can at least point to returns of 11.5 percent in 2011, compared with a drop in global median total equity returns of 3.7 percent, according to data from Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

It may be significantly lower than the 20 percent plus annualised returns that private equity firms usually target but it has been enough to satisfy many investors who typically look for them to outperform equities by 300 to 500 basis points.

“The returns that this asset class has generated for our pension fund are superior to other asset classes,” said Jane Rowe, senior vice president at Ontario Teachers Pension Plan last month.

It marked a rare intervention by one of the world’s largest private equity investors as the industry faced political and public vilification over claims of job cutting and asset stripping.

The real measure of success for private equity and its investors is the cash that flows into their accounts when companies are sold. That drives returns and fills executive bonus pots.

That tap is dripping, not flowing, but large businesses are attracting global attention. CVC’s brewing business in Central and Eastern Europe, which has Czech beer Staropramen at its heart, has drawn the world’s largest brewers including AB InBev and Japanese groups like Asahi and Suntory.

DEALS RETURNING

Returning confidence in global stock markets and a more stable outlook for the euro zone, combined with an improvement in debt markets, for now at least, may herald an increase in private equity deals.

“Equity markets are healthy and that instills confidence.” said one banker who advises private equity firms on deals.

It has not been a lack of capital that has hampered buyouts in recent months, as private equity firms sit on some $370 billion for deals, according to data firm Preqin, but an inability to access debt at the right prices.

The $15.2 billion of deals agreed so far in 2012 is about a fifth of what private equity firms inked in the same period of 2007, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The capital and the appetite for lending and underwriting loans by the large investment banks is coming back, the banker said. But others are disappointed dealmaking has not picked up more quickly.

“Given the uptick in public markets, it’s a little bit quieter than we were hoping,” said a second banker who advises private equity firms on deals in Europe.

Buyout firms and their advisers will have to sit on their hands a little longer, as confidence and appetite for risk filters through into the lending markets that grease the wheels and make buyouts work.

But as one cloud lifts another sweeps in.

Politicians and commentators are turning a spotlight on the industry’s activities and the compensation of its leading figures, drawn by Bain Capital founder Mitt Romney and his bid to become the next President of the United States.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Buyout firms and their leading executives are used to navigating choppy markets and have experience of coming under fierce attack from critics, who have dubbed them locusts and asset strippers.

As hundreds congregate for the annual SuperReturn conference, attention will focus on how they fend off unwanted scrutiny and counter sometimes vicious attacks.

The signs, at least, are that the public pension funds, endowments and sovereign wealth funds that back the private equity groups are still providing funds to the biggest and best performers.

BC Partners last week said it had raised 6.5 billion euros for its latest buyout fund, more than it originally expected.

That will give heart to the many firms that are following, such as Apax, Permira and Cinven, all looking to raise multi-billion euro pools of capital, now joined by Advent International, which is looking to raise 7 billion euros for deals, people familiar with the situation said.

But cautious investors are taking longer to make decisions.

The process for BC Partners took some 18 months from the point of issuing documents to potential investors. Blackstone, meanwhile, has taken four years to raise about $16 billion for its latest buyout fund.

“Fundraising was very difficult and much more complicated than in the past. It never took so long to close a fund,” said Stefan Zuschke, German country head for BC Partners.

(additional reporting by Philipp Halstrick, editing by Mark Potter)