At last it can be revealed. When I wrote a few weeks back about plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Dubai International Financial Centre, I had been sworn to secrecy about the details of the bash. But now, thanks to Jeff Singer, the chief executive of the DIFC Authority, I can share with readers some of the events that will make it such a special occasion.
Mr Singer gave a little speech the other evening at the very agreeable surroundings of the Café Belge in the Ritz-Carlton hotel next door to the DIFC. He spelled out details of the delights to come.
There will be celebratory dinners and receptions this week in London, alongside the Institute of International Finance colloquium that’s taking place there; there will be another bash in October at the IMF gathering in Washington.
No doubt both of these will be “to die for”, invitation-only events, but they pale into insignificance in comparison to the “Big One” – the actual 10th birthday party in Dubai in November.
In the early days, DIFC partygoers had the delights of world-famous tenors and Hollywood stars to offer revellers at the birthday bash. Then, perhaps worried about the bill as the global financial crisis was crashing all round, it went into a period of semi-hibernation.
Now it is back, although Mr Singer insisted there would be no famous opera stars. This time, the event will be in keeping with the DIFC’s role as a serious and growing hub of the global financial industry.
Instead of Plácido Domingo, on November 10 (put that date in your diary now) the star of the show will be … Professor Klaus Schwab.
Everybody knows him, of course, and his mere presence is enough to ensure a tremendous turnout of fun-seekers. At least it should when you include 800 delegates from the World Economic Forum, the organisation Mr Schwab founded 43 years ago in the little Alpine town of Davos, where it still holds its annual meeting.
The WEF is in town anyway for its annual Global Agenda Councils meeting, the prep sessions for the big Davos gathering, but Mr Singer has invited them all along to DIFC for the big night.
The Davos meeting is famed as the place where “masters of the universe” let their hair down in a convivial yet intellectually stimulating forum, and where altruistic superstars like Mick Jagger, Bono and George Clooney turn up to take the pulse of the business and economic world.
The WEF entourage quite likes a good night out too, as I can personally testify. But so far this year they haven’t been blessed with luck. Abuja in Nigeria, the last venue, couldn’t have been much fun in the midst of the kidnapping crisis; and Istanbul in September might not have been quite so bubbly as in previous years. So they’ll be looking forward to some light relief in Dubai.
So if Mr Singer can persuade Mr Schwab to get along his A-listers, November 10 promises to be quite a night. Who needs Plácido Domingo when you’ve got the WEF?
*****
The big foreign policy debate at the moment seems to be: is Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, bent on recreating the old communist empire that fell apart in 1991?
I bumped into a fellow journalist at an event recently, who worked for Itar Tass, the “information telegraph agency of Russia”, as his card announced. He resolved the debate as far as I’m concerned.
“So where are you from?” I asked, expecting Moscow, Omsk, Minsk or some such answer.
“I am from the Soviet Union,” he replied.
fkane@thenational.ae
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