Alisha Moopen

DEPUTY MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASTER DM HEALTHCARE

The last two years have been the toughest in the recent history of healthcare with the pandemic creating havoc with healthcare systems worldwide. Aster DM Healthcare remained right in the epicentre of managing the pandemic, serving a large number of Covid-19 positive patients who sought care with us across countries, and also working in partnership with governments to strategise and implement Covid management protocols to address the crisis. While Covid took a major toll on our business, we were required to be operational and even expand capacity on several occasions to ensure that we serve and help as many people as possible. This pushed us to adapt quickly, innovate to introduce new solutions and optimise to bring in best operational efficiency. The year 2021 proved to be turn-around year for Aster where many of these strategies were put into action and we are now set on the path to ensure sustainable and accessible quality healthcare for all.

Digital transformation and the use of technology has become integral to our core operations with the adoption of efficiency measures. For example, we introduced the E-ICU model during the peak of the pandemic and lockdown which ensured that our best critical care experts across operations in different countries could come together to form a central expert hub to provide the best medical care to a large number of critically ill Covid19 patients. Similarly, during the second surge in India, over 100 Aster doctors from the GCC came forward to provide free teleconsultation to Covid-19 patients based in India who had no means of accessing medical care.

While all of us at Aster believe that technology – or rather the right use of technology – is going to be a powerful changemaker in healthcare, I do think the current wave of quick service companies or restaurants or supermarkets that promote healthcare is not the way forward.

It’s unsettling to see people selling services to mop homes and do nose swabs in the same service menu. While our desire for convenience is important, the access to quality healthcare that people can trust is paramount. Also, having a holistic view of a patient, where a health partner looks at the full history of a patient and supports his health journey, rather than episodic intervention to help just access care, is important.

This is where a seamless omnichannel integrated approach becomes extremely important and key for the future of healthcare. And only those organisations that truly place your wellbeing and your convenience as complementary drivers will stand the test of this new rage of health-tech boom that we see.

While the opportunities are endless, let us not allow healthcare to be sold as a commodity. Health is the most powerful and dynamic state of being, and we as Aster are excited about the power of technology in the hands of the right healthcare providers to change the rules of healthcare for better outcomes and service levels.

We introduced the E-ICU model during the peak of the pandemic and lockdown which ensured that our best critical care experts across operations in different countries could come together to form a central expert hub to provide the best medical care to a large number of critically ill Covid-19 patients”

Sustainable designs, infrastructure and development for all kinds of spaces is not a requirement for the future anymore – we need it now. The remarkable year that 2021 was, it brought along a plethora of learning lessons along with potential solutions in tow, especially for the built environment. Infrastructure and real estate developments need to prioritise environment-friendly architecture and design today for a viable tomorrow. Embedding sustainable practices, solutions, materials, technology, and renewable energy across the entirety of our developments and cities is the only way to protect our world.

The pandemic has taught us some valuable lessons. One of the most important ones is that the road to recovery, be it economic or environmental, can be paved by using efficient and environment-friendly solutions. This holds even more true for the construction and real estate industry as the future of any to-be smart city looks bleak without integrating environmentally friendly buildings and spaces. The crises that we have all been struggling with over the past few years highlight the fact that prime metro cities may cease to remain habitable for our future generations if the environment from which we derive everything is not conserved actively. Routine practices and lifestyle habits of inhabitants of a city or a region can be improved through greener construction and real estate development practices.

The past year has been one of the most transformational ones, especially when one considers people’s and businesses’ approaches towards the environment and the concept of sustainability in general – it has become more real than they ever wanted to believe it to be. The way individuals look at their personal wellbeing and living space has elevated quite a bit as they are now more focused on the holistic wellbeing of themselves and the planet. Environmental mindfulness is beginning to see a dramatic rise in importance among consumers, businesses, and governments as they now work on a sustainable and technology-driven future that is genuinely viable. As consumers consider sustainability an essential aspect of their everyday lives and as governments push for greener initiatives, installations, ideas, and innovation, it is now the solution provider’s responsibility to design better offerings for everyone.

The year 2022 will see a lot of focus on developing a lowcarbon, sustainable and green global economy. We at Fakhruddin Properties are consistently focused on meeting the critical requirements of sustainability and ensuring that care for the environment remains at the centre of our business vision for our future developments. We truly appreciate the UAE’s progressive and considerate leadership doing a great job at driving sustainable real estate development and creating several opportunities pertaining to investment in sustainable projects. Here’s to hoping that 2022 sees a more comprehensive adoption of a sustainable approach towards urban development in the industry to reduce the pressure on our natural ecosystems and give our future generations a better place to thrive in.

The past year has been one of the most transformational ones, especially when one considers people’s and businesses’ approaches towards the environment and the concept of sustainability in general – it has become more real than they ever wanted to believe it to be”

2 021 was definitely a great recovery year for EFG Hermes’ Investment Bank. We saw a lot of ECM (equity capital market) deals and M&A (merger and acquisition) transactions across different jurisdictions – it’s actually going to be a record year for us. So it’s not just recovery from Covid-19, but we definitely saw a large number of transactions, lots of change in hands in terms of private assets, a number of privatisations, ECM and DCM (debt capital market) deals across the board. We worked on three IPOs that came out from Abu Dhabi in 2021 as well as an acquisition for Aramex on DFM. We also worked on three other IPOs in Saudi along with an accelerated equity offering there recently. In Egypt, we closed three accelerated equity offerings, out of which one was the first dual listing of a London listed company on EGX. We think there is a lot more room for offerings and there is significant investor interest that’s coming in the MENA region and it’s not just the index trades that we’ve seen in the past few years; currently we can see broad interest and reallocation of assets and equities across the board, which is very interesting.

Overall, we have seen lots of recovery in 2021, leading to some of the recovery themes that we are expecting to happen in 2022. One of them was the hike in energy prices in 2021. Our expectations are that oil prices will remain high – at around $70 per barrel on average in 2022 as well. So this will lead to a better balance sheet for oil exporting countries. Number two, they will reshuffle those proceeds into non-oil generating assets. We have already seen a spillover of liquidity because of this everywhere in the region. And the low interest rate environment also helped in the recovery.

But for 2022, while we expect oil prices to remain high – and this is going to help the region – there are more expectations of rate hikes rather than rate cuts, which is going to be a little bit negative on EM (emerging market) economies. But in terms of the GCC, we expect to see a recovery on the banking side, especially given the peg to the US dollar that we follow. Tourism and trade will also continue to recover in frontier emerging markets.

Overall, in 2022, we do expect volatility coming from whatever Covid-19 variant is there at the time. Definitely, we will live with this virus for quite some time ahead, but we think that the main point we should be focusing on is hospital admittance rates. If they are very low and death rates are low, then even if the case numbers are high, it will be positive, because that means that Covid-19 is getting to be more of a normal flu rather than a pandemic. We all hope that this will start to happen in the next few months or a year or so, but hopefully, this is the way that we can get out of this crisis. While there will always be volatility coming back and forth because of that, we have to ignore it and look at the bigger themes.

For EFG Hermes, from an investment bank perspective, we definitely want to continue remaining the number one player in ECMs in the frontier emerging markets where we operate. We want to continue operating in the equity offerings in the UAE – whether that’s in DFM or ADX. We are also planning to have a big push in Saudi as we had a very successful year there in 2021. Another area we are looking at is further working with the Egyptian government on the privatisation programme. We also want to make sure that we are still dominant on the brokerage side and on the research side with our globallyranked product. On a different note, we are also hoping that we can go back again to physical conferences this year – we have our ‘One on One’ conference scheduled in March. We are expecting around 200 companies to be presenting and around 800 investors to attend from across the world. I hope it will be feasible to have the event – we are optimistic about it.

But for 2022, while we expect oil prices to remain high – and this is going to help the region – there are more expectations of rate hikes rather than rate cuts, which is going to be a little bit negative on EM (emerging market) economies. But in terms of the GCC, we expect to see a recovery on the banking side”