Week for the Global Markets, all sorts of records broken. Investors were worried about the risk of rising Interest Rates. Tracy alloway had an interview on this in a wood of the. Abu dhabi. The market is a market. They have done a great job in stimulating the economy. President obama had started the Aircraft Carrier to move slowly, and he did a good job at it. The market is the market, it is always dangerous. They give it too much credit for it on the way up as you also have to take the blame for it when it goes down. Anchor what actually sparked the volatility . Have you seen Something Like this before . Guest sure. The quantity of course is frightening, but now we are dealing with etfs and computerrelated programming. I think the nervousness and markets is in the anticipation of Interest Rates rising. I think it is significant and we will see what happens in the next couple of years what happens in the overall economy. Also, the emotional transition. Jerome powell coming into the fed, the world being maybe not as transparent as we hoped i think economies all over the world are in very good shape. I think it is a momentary pause for longterm gain and im not really concerned about it. Tracy the other big news today is steve wynn stepping down as ceo of his own company. I have to ask you is trump going to ask you to become chairman of the rnc finance committee . Guest i do not think you would punish me that bad. Tracy has he asked you . Guest it is a job i am not interested in. Steve did a great job added. It is a very political job. I am not really political, i happen to be a friend of the president that is why i support him. I am not really interested in spending my time doing the great things that stephen others do in raising money. Tracy who do you think would be good at it yet of . Guest if you are talking about tom records and other people who are really involved in the Republican Party the access to powerful men and women, those of you have the time to that cause, that is what it takes. I have a day job and i am really happy with my day job. Tracy we are of course here in and we areeast talking about the Political Developments happening in the gulf favored some people say trump has churned up sentiments around iran. How are you viewing his middle eastern policy . Guest his middle east policy is brilliant. In a very short period of time he has taken on one of the most difficult historic paths ever. Tasks ever. We all know that there is no arab world the middle east is a culmination of tribes and flags and a very complicated manner. But, i think what president has done with Rex Tillerson and Jared Kushner is trying to expedite what has to happen in the region, which is a real a realignment of a fossil feel economy to a more diverse economy, to give hope, faith and confidence to a growing young population, without which we will have a real problems. To the this return ,legance of what it should be not a defiance of radicals, but a realignment of how great countries like the emirates, saudi arabia, now with israel, canada line and present a more moren align and present a powerful balance to the region. Tracy what about u. S. Politics . We have republicans and democrats still hashing it out over immigration. President trump saying things like that he would welcome a Government Shutdown on thursday if democrats do not meet his demands. Is that a policy that is divisive . Guest no, i think it is a negotiating tactic. The president has a negotiating style which is to take things to the extreme and allow them to mediate. Politics is boys and girls playing badly in the sandbox and i think that is what is happening. I think they are all better than that and if they will step up and do the right thing with so many constituencies, it is quite complicated. I think the president s strategy is startling emotionally to a lot of people and we are all getting used to that new vocabulary and cadence. Tracy going back to the if it, i would be remiss did not ask you about your own company. We have had market turmoil mostly on the equity side and meanwhile we have people in credit still talking about cross evaluations . Guest it is quite complicated. In public companies, investors want everything. They want yield, low leverage, increased valuation all of those things in a zero Interest Rate environment are very complicated. I think what you see in the corporate world as a result of everything that is happening on the regulatory rain is consolidation and a drive to capturing cash from all over the world. What happens to that cash would not just be dividends and buybacks, it would be reinvested. Over the longterm, i think it is fine. I think the market is sorting through the equity side or the debt side as compared to Interest Rate yields. We as a Public Company are suffering from the Interest Rate fear of what happens when Interest Rates go up. But the longterm effects, is that real estate as a postage stamp, private equity as an asset class has always outperformed everything over a tenyear period. Tracy there has been a lot of scrutiny over particular products like the etfs. Do you think that should cause President Trump to increase some of his rollback . Guest no. I think the president is above engineering his policies as a result of what is happening in the market. There is market factors. Probably not his intent. As he drives toward 4 growth and full employment, which is all we wanted i think his job is in addition to being commander in chief, to be a cheerleader. Which is what he is doing. It is good for america and good for business and it should be good for the globe. Yousef up next, dubai airport retains its crown as the worlds Busiest Airport. We hear from its ceo next. This is bloomberg. Yousef welcome back to the best of Bloomberg Markets middle east. Dubai global airport retained its fourth Busiest Airport ranking with more than 18 million passengers passing through in 2017. It is hoping to hit 90 million this year. What we have is a shortage of capacity. We may be the Largest International airport in the world, but we have one of the smallest footprints. So we have to make better use of our quite rare slot now. Fortunately, with the strategy around thea3hd, we are seeing a much more efficient use of slot. We are 40 passengers ahead of the most efficient user of airport slots around the world. I think it is because we are Getting Better efficiency from scarce resources which means growth may be slower, but the quality of the growth and the actual key markets we serve, continues to forge ahead. Yousef weve put up on a chart the basic trend on a month to month basis there. In terms of the growth remaining intact, and what has been happening with the figures, the question becomes, how much can you replicate that success on the cargo front . Guest cargo remains quite buoyant. What we have seen is traffic millionof about 2. 6 5 tons during the course of 2017. The gxb has performed really well. At the new airport, we had Something Like 7. 9 growth over all. So, it has been quite a buoyant year for cargo as well as passenger numbers. Yousef cargo as well as passenger numbers it has been a tough year in terms of politics. One years since President Trump came into office. How much of a negative impact have you seen in the numbers . We had you on set in previous quarters and we were talking about concerns on rising protectionism and more security measures which may impact of the free flow of passengers through the airport. Where do you stand on how this administration has been doing . Guest 2017 was definitely a game of two hearts. It started with restrictions on travel and the laptop ban. We are pleased to see now that most of those problems have been quickly overcome. The second half of 2017, we saw record growth and significant numbers throughout the year where we were well over the 7 million passengers per month. There is Something Like 180 people per minute who go through the airport. Growth targets may be more modest but our quality targets and Customer Service delivery is really the main focus. Yousef what about congestion . I travel a lot as well. If you are traveling at peak hours, Early Morning hours on the night, it is actually very difficult to get through the airport. What are you doing to address some of that . On the one hand you are trying to increase capacity, but as you do so, are you taking capacity offline . Guest we have one of the older terminals at the airport going through a major refurbishment. The gates are being upgraded to accommodate that terminal. We are also seeing an open gate concept which is a much more passenger friendly. It is an opportunity for us to showcase all the different innovations. The main focus has actually been the investment in new passengerfacing technology which you may have noticed as you go through the airport the new smart gates which are meant to reduce immigration gate times. We are also focusing on ways to remove some of the intrusive processes that passengers have to experience at an airport automating them and basically , leading the way in showcasing some of the technical solutions. Yousef i have spoken to a few investors and they say that to buy runs its airport so well that they should be running other airports. We understand there was part of the airport in rio that is up for sale . Guest we have been asked this question, but at the moment that airport in dubai is quite a challenge. And we are about to open a significant expansion of that airport, to almost four times its current capacity over the course of the next few months, so we pretty much have most of our resources for the utilized fully utilized at the dubai airport. I am not sure at the moment, that there is a capacity to do such a great job elsewhere. Yousef as global and political leaders gather in abu dhabi for the summit, we hear from the chairman himself. This is bloomberg. Yousef welcome back to the best of Bloomberg Markets middle east. Hundreds of Global Business and political leaders gathered in abu dhabi this week. When you look at how young the region is, the u. N. Has projected there will be 4 billion People Living in africa at the end of this century. So, the major growth in the worlds population will take place in this region it is a very young region. I have been visiting for 20 years, and we made the decision to launch here in the uae. Tracy when you zoom in on the gulf region in particular, there is a lot going on. Lower oil prices are posing a challenge to the economy clearly, but you also have on the plus side, attempts to diversify. On balance, are you positive or negative about the future of the middle east . Guest i am very positive. When you talk about the future of the country, over the last 40 years years, as i have visited , Different Countries around the world, i always go visit their schools. You can always to the future of a country in the schools. When i was going to china in the 1990s, i was focused on what was going on in the educational system and visiting schools. In particular the uae, i have been visiting schools in the past 20 years. Tracy i want to segue a little bit to the market. We did have some drama early in the week, a big fall in stocks in particular. What do you think happened, and . How concerning is this weeks decline . Guest i think everything is relative. If you are talking about an index, a change of 1000 is not an enormous. When you are talking about 4 or 5 changes some of which is already on the rebound come i think we have come through. Very little changes in Interest Rates for a very long time which has reduced volatility. But, you had a number of different instruments traded which are unwinding. That created a lot of volatility. A lot of people look at it and think we are volatile. At this conference and around the world at our 250 events, we have something called the Global CapitalMarket Investors and there are still 30 trillion in the world, yielding west of 1 . They are here. Insurance companies, tension funds, endowments, all of them are to figure out how they can meet their functions and how they can invest. And you have record liquidity and corporations around the world. So, these might create opportunities for them to invest. Tracy i need to press you on this point, the low yield point. We have heard about the search for yields for years. How difficult is it for investors . You come from a highyield background. It is not looking so highyield at the moment . Guest i would say rates are relatively low. But as you go around the world, in japan for example, the are around 2. 75 . The chairman of the Milken InstituteGlobal Markets group is having an assumption on the Japanese Pension Fund of 1. 8. 5 ifre looking for 4 to you converted to u. S. Dollars. So youre able to achieve some of those rates. It is not necessarily the rate s making things attractive it is , the lack of provenance. The last few years, you do not have maintenance covenants which have allowed private equity to flourish tremendously. In the United States today, private equity now owns more companies than are listed does tracy does it look frosty to you . Guest private equity now owns more companies than are listed. Longterm borrowing is fixed yourself,ou can ask if i can borrow noninvestment grade in europe at 2. 75 , is that a liability or an asset . Longterm debt at that level . You have to look at the entire structure. These low rates have substantially reduced interest expense which flows for the equity holders. Tracy in that case, what happens to credit went rates when rates start going up . That again was one of the things that spark to the falloff on friday the riyadh in the equity markets. We did not see that bleed into a credit which was surprising to some people. Guest you had in january, a tightening of spreads as governments increased rates. You had little change in the highyield market. We have to remember that 99 of all the companies in the world are noninvestmentgrade. When you look at europe today, its highyield market yields 1 to 2 below what the u. S. Market yields today. You are seeing a number of companies more attractive to finance in europe, or raise money in euro dollars or even pounds, then dollars today. Tracy is that not an odd situation, where you have credit spreads tightening when you have a flood of supply . Guest in january you have less issuance, but it picks up by april, may. February will see an opening of those spreads and as a result, the underlying Economic Activity is what ultimately people are looking at. Will you be paid back . What is going to happen throughout the world . And throughout the world at this moment, the economy looks strong. Tracy david benson has supposedly sent a plea for donald trump for you to be pardoned. Have you heard anything about that . Boutts no, we have talked a a number of things with the president , but not that. We have been focused on opportunities for growth. The relationship with latin america, which is important to the United States, but that has not been a topic we have discussed. Yousef , could the saudi spending spree the good news for the nations lenders . We will hear from a ceo who thinks it could. This is bloomberg. Yousef the ceo of this bank told bloomberg this week that he expects saudi arabias expansionary budget will help drive its growth this year. It comes as the lender announced fourthquarter profit of 160 million riyadh topping even the highest analyst estimates. We talked to him. It is the fastestgrowing for the last five years. We have achieved many records during 2017. Regarding the financial numbers as well as the products we offer to the customers. I am very optimistic about 2018 in this gross growth will continue. Yousef when you look at the change in policy with the government, will this move away from the harsh austerity to a more expansionary budget, more investment, more spending what could this mean in terms of a boosting your bottom line . What kind of lending growth are you looking ahead to . Guest as you said, the spending is essential for the economy growth. I am leaving the budget for 2018 will have many opportunities for us. There are many megaprojects coming, as well as we hope to finish the bigger projects that started a few years ago. That includes our role to fund those projects. Yousef give me a sense of what the impact could be from the ongoing selloff we are seeing in Global Equities and bonds, especially the rising and surging bond yields around the globe. Could that impact your operations in any shape or form . We are focusing on the local markets more and trying to satisfy our type of investment opportunities. That is clearly from the financials if you see our finance portfolio, it has grown more than 12 in 2017, and our has grown by more than 100 in 2017. Governments started issuing sukkuk in 2017 which also presented opportunities for the shariarun banks. Yousef this is an idea from some of the analyst, if you look at your performance and your ambitions, and you want to grow your branch network, perhaps mergers and acquisitions are a way to go into the new year with some innovation. What do you think . Guest there are already two banks in saudi arabia which announced that they are looking for a merger, which has become public information. Perhaps we still have very strategic hopes to increase our network. We added 14 branches and merged our atms network which added more than 90 atms in 2017. Today, we have one of the largest among saudi banks.