Handling your finances can be a tough ordeal, especially if you lose a job. Before you know it, you could be in over your head. If this is so, then a bankruptcy lawyer can help. Find out how one can benefit you.
Helps stop harassment Getting harassing phone calls is one of the worst things about being in debt. Your phone may ring early in the morning to late in the evening. This is because many creditors do everything they can to collect a debt. However, some practices can be illegal. If you’re being threatened in any manner or simply experience a call that you feel isn’t right, then you need to get a bankruptcy lawyer as soon as you can.
Knows the law You may think all you have to do is get the proper paper work, file with the courts and leave. Yet, if you don’t know the law, you may be doing more harm than good. That’s because there are different types of financial ruin and your bankruptcy lawyer knows the difference. He or she knows all the aspects of this type of law and can help be your guide so that you experience the best possible outcome.
Offer peace of mind One of the best reasons to contact a bankruptcy lawyer is simply peace of mind. Trying to wade through all that goes into filing for financial ruin can really be a tough situation. You’re already stressed out and can only take so much. If you’re constantly hounded by persistent creditors or are afraid to check your mail because of the letters that discuss legal matters such as suing you or garnishing wages, you need an attorney fast. In the end, you can leave the details to him or her so you can rest easy again.
Save you money The whole point of filing for financial ruin is to get out of all the monetary problems you’re having. However, there are some people that get caught up in a ton of other details that simply waste their money. You may get letters in the mail from companies that claim that they can help you get out of debt. The catch is that you need to pay them obscene amounts of money. Sadly, this can be scammers looking to take the little money you have left. A bankruptcy lawyer is a legal expert that knows just what to do to help you get through the process without causing you an extreme amount of money. Best of all, you’ll know you’re working with a pro that can assist you in all your monetary and legal troubles regarding debt collectors.
Save you time If you try to handle your financial difficulties on your own, you could simply waste a lot of time unnecessarily. That’s because you don’t understand all the details and red tape that can be involved in filing for financial ruin. There are multiple legal issues that only an experienced bankruptcy lawyer understands. The best thing to do is to make sure you have one of these legal professionals on your side if you want to speed up the process and be done with worrying about your debt and annoying calls from creditors.
Despite chilly global credit markets, the Middle Eastern wealth management arena is a recruitment hotspot. Firms are busily hiring senior executives to spearhead new wealth management teams. For example, Merrill Lynch recently appointed Mazin Al-Shakarchi as a financial advisor covering Qatar from the Bahrain office. HSBC Bank Middle East has appointed Walid Boustany to the role of executive director, strategic investments, Middle East & North Africa. He will be responsible for HSBC’s strategic planning across the region. Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, has appointed Fadi Abuali as co-head of its Middle East private wealth management business, alongside current head Farid Pasha.
And there is more: the Central Bank of Bahrain has approved Douglas Hansen-Luke as Robeco’s new chief executive for the Middle East. Mr Hansen-Luke formerly worked in senior positions for ABN Amro Asset Management in Asia, Europe and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain-based Ithmaar Bank has appointed Shaikh Salman bin Ahmad Al Khalifa as managing director, group business development.
The rash of appointments seen in recent years will continue, barring an unlikely collapse in demand for wealth management, Professor Amin Rajan, chief executive of Create-Research, a UK consultancy on the investment management industry, told WealthBriefing.
Wealth managers are going into the Middle East in a big way, said Professor Rajan. This is a high-margin business to be in as banks get fees right along the value chain, he said. But although the region is lucrative, making money is not easy. Local investors typically punish poor investment performance quickly – often far faster than is the case with European or US clients, said Professor Rajan.
The real issue is to understand the client mindset. Client money [in the Middle East] isn’t sticky at all. When performance is bad they ask for a rebate, which is how it should be. If [wealth managers] can survive in the Middle East, they can survive anywhere, he added.
Barclays Wealth, for example, has every intention of doing more than just survive in the region. As an illustration of its ambitions, Barclays is moving into a new 14,000 square feet office in the Dubai International Financial Centre, which will be a hub for the firm’s operations in the region. Operating currently in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Barclays Wealth is also planning to make its Doha Qatar office operational this year.
Barclays Wealth leadership believes that the Middle East is a core area of growth. A substantial investment in human resources and capabilities and a rigorous expansion plan will lead to a substantial increase in the scope of operations, Soha Nashaat, managing director, head of Middle East, North Africa & Turkey for Barclays Wealth, told WealthBriefing.
Like Professor Rajan, Ms Nashaat says wealth management firms entering the Middle East from outside the region must understand the local culture if they are to make a success of their business. For example, more than 70 per cent of businesses are family-owned, which requires managers to forge long-term connections.
Wealth managers must understand and cater to the regional trends such as the dominance of family offices, Ms Nashaat said. Investors tend to be intolerant of risk and hold a high proportion of assets in cash and in offshore locations, she added.
Middle Eastern clients put great stress on strong relationships with investment advisors and dislike high turnover in staff, a factor that wealth managers must consider in their staff recruitment and retention plans, Stuart Crocker, chief executive, Emirates Platform and Southern Gulf States, HSBC Private Bank told WealthBriefing.
People don’t like seeing relationship managers moving on every two or three years to other banks, he said. His own bank, part of the HSBC banking group, serves clients both from local Middle Eastern locations as well as from its teams of specialists in Geneva.
The general background for wealth managers is certainly favourable. The investable assets of HNW individuals will rise by 50 per cent between 2006 and 2010, according to Barclays Wealth data.
The number of HNW individuals rose by 11.9 per cent in 2006 from a year before, according to the latest Merrill Lynch/Capgemini World Wealth Report issued last June. Wealth management intermediaries have only started to manage a significant share of assets in the region. Research from Zurich International Life, for example, reveals that expats living in the Middle East prefer to rely on their own judgment or friends and family when purchasing financial products. The survey showed that fewer than one in ten expats would enlist a financial advisor, either in their country of domicile or residence, to help them make the financial decisions. Financial advisors have a vast untapped market to go for.
While researchers like PricewaterhouseCoopers have warned that wealth management firms face a skills bottleneck, hiring staff for Middle Eastern slots is being helped by a benign tax regime and attractive pay packages.
Private bankers in tax-free Dubai earn 25 per cent more than their peers in Geneva and almost 40 per cent more than colleagues in London, according to a recent survey by Dubai-based headhunter Dunn Consultancy FZ-LLC.
Excluding bonuses, private bankers in Dubai with at least 10 years experience receive an average salary of $276,500 with allowances, compared with pre-tax earnings of $221,900 in Geneva and $199,100 in London, it found.
The economics of wealth management in the Middle East certainly look compelling. For the time being at least, the toughest challenge for players in the region is keeping up with the pace.
The Eurozone is also called the Euro area because of what it stands for. This union is made of 17 countries, members of the European Union which agreed to adopt the same currency and the same legal tender. This turns the Eurozone into a monetary and economic union. When the Eurozone was established back in 1999 it represented one of the first things that pointed out towards the tendency of globalization. Is this tendency no longer wanted? Do European leaders no longer want to be united under the same currency? Or is the Euro the cause of the current financial problems and maintaining this union can no longer be profitable or safe?
All these questions started to worry leaders from the Eurozone and not only. Even though the 17 countries that are part of this union are the ones directly involved and affected by a possible falling apart, the other European countries or states from other continents are very likely to suffer from the consequences of such a breakup too.
Most financial specialists say that the main cause of a possible Eurozone crash is the huge debts many of the 17 countries cannot pay back. The fact that Greece was threatened by a default and that only another loan was able to postpone what some consider the inevitable makes things even worse. Analysts say that this financial crisis resembles the incurable diseases called cancer. If it is ignored it doesnt go away. Instead it spreads until the patient dies. If the patient is the Eurozone, only an intense treatment can save the Euro and the economies of the states that adhered to it.
There are some investors who speculate that the end of the Eurozone is close and try to find ways of making money out of this crush. Some of the financial analysts say that it is because of these people who speculate for their own interest that the Euro is threatened and that the Eurozone can fall apart. In spite of that, there are obvious signs that things are not as they should be and that the common currency might cause more problems than help.
Investors get scared of all the negative news they hear and try to do their best to preserve their wealth. Many of them fear that keeping money in banks is not a good solution and choose to invest in assets that have high intrinsic value. Many of them choose to invest in gold or other precious metals that are the only hard assets that seemed to increase their value these days. They are making the right decisions since buying gold has, is and will always be a profitable investment.