Features
THE NEXT PHASE OF VIRTUALISATION

By Editor
The next leg of the journey is to port mission critical workloads to virtualized infrastructure.
Consolidation and automation of their IT infrastructures are what customers are seeking to make their Business processes and services more effective and virtualization has been a means to that. To take the process further, Virtualisation must extend to the domain of the mission crucial Business applications.
Historically, the challenges in moving Mission critical applications to virtual infrastructures have been about high availability, predictable performance and security primarily. There are however solutions available that help customers tide over these challenges by testing and validating infrastructure performance as well as troubleshoot issues that arise in the test phase.
While Virtualization deployments in the region are no longer confined to only the commodity workloads, the instances of virtualizing mission critical workloads are still in the early stages but are showing an increase. Most of the virtualisation deployments continues to be limited to servers and systems.
Feras Abu Aladous, Manager, Systems Engineering, Services & Support at Brocade says, “Many Enterprises in the region are targeting virtualization of up to 90% of their servers and systems, to increase Server’s utilization efficiency, increase mobility, orchestration agility. A reduced number of physical servers require reduced space and cooling inside the datacenter which leads to cost savings as well.”
Companies in the region are definitely starting to virtualise business critical applications at a rapid rate opines Gregg Petersen, Regional Director Middle East & SAARC at Veeam Software. He adds, “In some instances we are seeing banks deploying on a virtual workload, however the Middle East region is in the infancy stages of this compared to USA and Europe. But, there is definitely a huge move towards virtualisation of these core applications.”
Operational agility is a key reason driving Businesses to head into the next phase of virtualization. The next leg of the journey is to port the more difficult workloads to virtualized infrastructure.
“We believe most of the technical barriers to virtualization of these more difficult workloads have already been resolved, and it is already becoming mainstream to virtualize across the board. We are seeing different factors driving the virtualization of these database and “big iron” workloads though. In the first phase of virtualization customers were focused on consolidation of “easy workloads.” For this next phase, they are much more focused on operational agility and speed of time-to-market. So IT departments that virtualize all of their workloads tend to do so because they want to offer a cloud utility experience to their lines of business – this is no longer just about asset cost avoidance,” says Aaron White General Manager, Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, Hitachi Data Systems.
Over the past few years, other hypervisors have gained ground while VMware’s Hyper V still dominates by far in terms of x86 server virtualization infrastructure with Microsoft a distance second. Hyper-V has constantly improved and added more features to compete with VMware and gain market share while there are other competitors including Citrix’s XenServer that carries no licensing charge, the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor (REVH) etc that have smaller market share.
The focus has however shifted away from hypervisors to innovations around the Management layers above the hypervisor.
Aaron says, “We have started to see them, but this tends to be within System Integrators and Service Providers’ landscape rather than in the traditional internal enterprise IT. The reason for this is a “leveling-up” of the capabilities of the hypervisor. So whereas in the past there was clear white space between ESX, the leading hypervisor, and Hyper-V / OpenStack, we have now seen that the hypervisor layer is becoming commoditized over time. And customers are starting to focus more on the management layers above it. We tend to see customers introducing at a “second hypervisor,” because they are looking at leveraging the merits of a specific management ecosystem, rather than because the specific hypervisor brings differentiation.
Enterprises mostly stick with one virtualization vendor to reduce cost of operational expenses but that is beginning to change. Customers are looking for best functionalities as some workloads do perform better on some hypervisors vis-à-vis others.
Greg says, “We are witnessing many cases where customers order Veeam Software – both hyper-V and VMware in large quantities. This tells us that customers are utilising the best of both worlds. Generally, we see a lot of production environments on VMware and hyper-V and this is where Veeam plays a crucial role because we have the ability to provide the best of both worlds. In addition we have also seen a large amount of deployment in business critical applications with hyper-V and VMware, once again proving that multi-hypervisor environments are becoming more common.”
Multi-hypervisor environments bring along its own set of challenges and therefore there could be customers sticking with one hypervisor. However, cross platform management will be a reality that needs to be taken in stride for those who are willing to look at the best of the options.
Aaron argues, “The downside of that is that managing two hypervisors increases your operational overhead – you need to have two sets of operational and integration processes. This is why it mainly occurs within the System Integrator space – they have the organizational economies of scale that can make it cost effective. We have also seen this drive an interest in converged platforms such as Hitachi’s Unified Compute Platform. This platform takes care of all the workflow required to integrate and manage everything from the hardware elements up to the hypervisor. As it supports both VMware and Hyper-V, it frees customers up to focus on business workflow “above the hypervisor” and is a key enabler for this new trend in Infrastructure as a Service.”
The datacenter
In the datacenter Server virtualization has seen widespread adoption and continues to be the primary focus of virtualization efforts. With the increasing adoption of virtualized computing infrastructure, enterprises are able to run multiple servers on the same equipment, reducing the demand for additional servers. As a result, data centers are becoming smarter and supporting more users than ever before while requiring less hardware to do all of this.
Feras says, “Virtualization is the major trend inside the data centers; and it’s expected that by the end of 2014 around 70% of Server workload will be virtualized, but Storage and Network virtualization is still very low.”
Virtualization in other domains is still growing at a modest pace and would be the focus in the second phase. Virtualized infrastructure offers the potential for higher productivity, scalability and manageability compared to traditional computing which is what customers are in pursuit of as they allow virtualization to get deeper into their networks.
Aaron says, “We would consider server virtualization to be pretty well advanced – we’re about 90% there, and are just about tying up loose ends with it. People are now looking to technical innovations in network and storage virtualization, as well as the management ecosystem to provide the next level of agility and efficiency.”
Automation would be a key objective going forward in the datacenter. An effective virtualization strategy lays down the framework for more automation of regular tasks and this enables greater efficiency with available computing resources.
Greg says, “There is a lot of buzz around automation in the datacentre at the moment. Over the last three years virtualisation has moved from 30 – 40% to 60 – 70%. Most of our customers are about 60% virtualised. As organisations become mature in virtualisation, automation will continue to become an important aspect for companies.”
There are bottlenecks along the way for a wider adoption of virtualization. For instance, there are some very mature technology offerings in the Storage Virtualization space but significant differences between individual vendor strategies are slowing down adoption, believes Aaron.
He comments, “Most vendors still sell separate storage virtualization appliances, whereas Hitachi has integrated storage virtualization capabilities into every enterprise storage array that we have sold for the last ten years. And our customers have now leveraged this during several transition events to virtualize legacy assets and accelerate transformation. So we believe pretty strongly that Storage Virtualization just needs to be an integrated feature of every storage controller in order to gain broader adoption.”
He also believe that applications are still too tightly coupled to physical storage assets and physical locations.
Aaron adds, “This is the next wave of value-add from Storage Virtualization, and it is why we have invested in Storage Virtualization OS, which will enable us to run a common storage virtualization platform across all of our storage hardware containers. We also believe that customers will move to active/active architectures and have introduced distributed Virtual Storage Machines which can live forever, delivering zero downtime during site disaster recovery and non-disruptive technology refresh.”
On the other hand SDN (software defined networking) has still had very limited adoption and there are a lot of competing standards at the transport virtualization and management control layers. There are also strong requirements for a more integrated approach between the management frameworks for SDN and Network Function Virtualization.
“We believe that the benefits in terms of total cost to provision new services are so substantial that we will see very active investment for these use cases in the short term within the SI and Service Provider space. Once this technology is proven in this arena it will become more common in tradition enterprise IT.
SMB adoption
Virtualistion technologies suit growing SMB Businesses as well as the already large sized customers. In fact Virtualisation helps dynamically scale up capabilities of a Business’s IT infrastructure and this is a trend seen in the case of companies who are looking to add more virtual servers.
Greg says, “SMB clients are definitely adopting virtualisation and we can see this with our customers. We are seeing companies who have up to 10 servers and instead of putting it on physical servers they are recognising the need to virtualise. It’s a trend that is rapidly increasing and more and more customers are realising the value in adopting virtualisation.”
There is better understanding among SMB Businesses that Virtualisation will help them not only manage costs of upgrading IT infrastructure but also improve critical tasks like data backups and high availability.
Feras says, “SMB market is considering virtualization more than ever. SMBs are trying to get more performance and flexibility out of their existing server resources, considering the rising cost of managing physical data centers. Server virtualization improves disaster recovery and high availability allowing administrators to take VM snapshots, and recover from existing snapshots, and reduces the number of required servers to implement solutions.
However, SMBs have limited exposure to Virtualistion benefits within their networks and largely confined to only server consolidation. Enterprises on the other hand are more focused on optimizing the benefits across and therefore adopt innovations faster.
Aaron says, “We’ve seen large enterprises that are much more virtualized than SMBs. In fact, the most virtual organizations are the ones who are process-driven, focused, and committed to achieving efficiencies as a primary goal. Those who lag behind in the virtualization landscape the most are those who have taken some individual areas of the business, and run the IT departments for those sectors almost as pet projects. In addition, the SMB space tends to focus on Server Virtualization whereas SI’s and large enterprises have clear additional use cases that they can enable by deploying network and storage virtualization layers as well.”
Server virtualization will be the key driver of virtualisation market but for customers who have already gone through a first phase of virtualization, they will have the opportunity to look at tapping into other innovations from the virtualisation industry.
Aaron says, “Servers and to a certain extent storage virtualization too have seen growth. For networking it’s a bit of a different story – they’re not necessarily about consolidation they’re about programmability. Networking efficiency comes from bringing complex systems into a virtual, manageable space, and alleviating IT departments dependency on hardware segmentation and re-config.”
With virtualization, the utilization rates of the installed hardware has a huge jump. The ROI benefits are seen in a short time.
Greg says, “With server virtualisation the benefits are seen instantly. Storage and network virtualisation are yet to gain traction in this region compared to other regions. But, it’s just a matter of time before network and storage virtualisation takes off, because it’s cost effective and far more efficient.”
While most virtualized workloads are either server or desktop workloads, there is an increased interest in virtualizing network and application delivery etc.
Feras says, “Sever virtualization is the major trend in Data center virtualization and very mature, on the other hand network and storage virtualization is still under evaluation by enterprises, and not widely implemented.”
In summary, there are applications that are still ring-fenced from virtualization and while that percentage may begin to come down each year, even outside of that the scope for virtualization remains high. So while there is a huge variance among customers, the number of those that have virtualized the entire stack – server, storage and network is increasing rapidly. Further, while virtualization may not be seen as essential before adopting cloud computing, cloud deployments in virtual environments deliver optimized results and hence a key consideration factor for Businesses looking to adopt cloud services.
Features
2025 Hospitality Tech Trends

By Prince Thampi, Founder and CEO, Hudini
As we approach 2025, the hospitality industry is poised for transformational growth, driven by evolving traveller preferences and advancements in technology. The future of hospitality promises enhanced convenience, personalisation and sustainability, with a significant focus on creating memorable experiences for guests. Let’s dive into five key trends that will shape the hospitality tech landscape in 2025 and beyond.
- The Continued Rise of Frictionless Technology
The increased demand for frictionless experiences is set to dominate the industry, with more and more travellers preferring hotels that offer touch-free check-in, check-out, and room access via mobile apps. This trend reflects a broader shift towards easy interactions powered by seamless digital integration. Mobile apps have been an essential tool for a few years now, enabling guests to manage their stays, order room service, and access hotel information effortlessly. With the introduction of Gen AI, those apps have become more powerful than ever and are now able to provide highly personalised recommendations and speak in different languages.
Hotels embracing this trend will gain a competitive edge, as tech-savvy travellers prioritise convenience and efficiency during their stay. According to a recent survey by Deloitte, around 72% of travellers are more likely to choose a hotel that offers mobile check-in and check-out services over those that don’t.
- Hyper Personalised Guest Experiences
In 2025, personalisation will continue to be at the core of hospitality services but will finally be taken to the next level thanks to Gen AI. Guests expect hotels to anticipate their needs and offer tailored experiences, from customised room settings to personalised dining recommendations. Apps powered by AI are now able to predict guest needs based on a wealth of data, ingested from the hotel systems or fed externally.
Leveraging guest data and insights, hotels can create unique offerings that cater to individual preferences. This level of personalisation not only enhances guest satisfaction but also fosters loyalty and repeat bookings. According to Oracle’s findings, biometrics and AI are set to play pivotal roles, with 62% of guests valuing automated recognition for personalised interactions. Biometrics will experience a breakthrough into mainstream hospitality in 2025. Facial recognition technology has matured significantly and is ready to be weaved into the guest experience. It will enable better security and guest recognition while protecting their privacy at the same time.
- AI-Enabled Customer Service
Artificial intelligence is revolutionising every aspect of the hospitality industry, but will be by itself a new way of providing customer service. Chatbots and virtual assistants are becoming standard tools for handling common queries, offering instant support, and streamlining operations at any time and in any language.
AI-driven solutions not only enhance efficiency but also provide guests with 24/7 assistance, ensuring a smoother and more satisfying experience. By integrating AI technologies, hotels can free up staff to focus on delivering exceptional in-person service.
- Sustainability and Eco-Friendly Practices
Sustainability is no longer optional, it’s a necessity often enforced by regulation. Travellers are increasingly favouring hotels that adopt eco-friendly practices, such as using locally sourced food, implementing energy-efficient operations, and reducing waste.
By prioritising sustainability, hotels not only meet guest expectations but also contribute positively to the environment. This commitment to green initiatives enhances brand reputation and attracts environmentally conscious travellers. A recent survey by Booking.com found that 83% of global respondents believe more sustainable travel is vital, with 49% believing there aren’t enough sustainable travel options and 53% saying they get annoyed when a hotel prevents them from being sustainable.
Smart use of technology is key in the sustainability journey of hotels. Technology can accurately measure the reduction in carbon footprint, it will help reduce energy and adopt renewable energy sources, and will enable the effective management of food waste. Many hospitality apps allow guests to apply green energy settings to a room, some will even exchange your energy savings to loyalty points.
- The return of ‘real’
With Gen Z – the first generation grown up with everything digital – becoming the next large group to travel, the craving for ‘real’ experiences is bigger than it ever was. Hotels focusing on truly unique and hyper local experiences; a great meal, cultural outing, or wellness treatment will win the hearts of this generation.
Fortunately hotel apps, AI, automation of processes, sustainability tech and the removal of cumbersome processes like checking-in and studying paper manuals will free up hotel staff to allow them to do what they do best: providing unforgettable, personalised and sustainable experiences.
Features
With DMTT into effect from Jan 1st, 2025, a tax expert explains everything businesses in Bahrain need to know!

Last September, the Kingdom of Bahrain introduced a new law to implement a Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (DMTT) at a rate of 15% on businesses operating in the Kingdom that meet certain criteria.
With the new tax into effect in time for the new year, Mr. Nilesh Ashar, an international tax specialist with more than 25 years of experience, serving as Senior Managing Director & Head of Tax Middle East at FTI Consulting, provided a comprehensive overview of the new law and its implications for businesses in Bahrain.
Mr. Ashar stated that the Kingdom’s decision is a significant milestone in the Middle East, with Bahrain emerging as a front runner to implement the DMTT on large multinational enterprises (MNEs) having presence in the Kingdom.
“The new law underscores Bahrain’s international commitment as part of the inclusive framework of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), to address base erosion and profit shifting by MNEs,” stated Mr. Ashar.
“Effect from January 1st, 2025, onwards, the law is largely based on the OECD Model Rules on global minimum tax (GMT) in terms of calculation of the tax, exclusions, and reliefs. Additionally, the new law contains specific provisions on procedures, enforcement, and anti-avoidance measures applicable in the Kingdom.”
While explaining who will be affected by this tax, and what the law actually entails, he added that the new law applies a 15% tax on the income of Bahrain entities (including permanent establishment, joint venture, and JV subsidiaries) that are part of an MNE group with annual consolidated revenue exceeding €750 million, for at least two out of four preceding fiscal years. However, the tax does not apply to foreign subsidiaries of a Bahraini-headquartered group or other foreign group companies that are part of the same MNE group. The DMTT is also not applicable to certain excluded entities as specified in the law, including government bodies, international organizations, non-profit organizations, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and certain investment funds.
Mr. Ashar explained that the law lists specific transitional and permanent reliefs from the levy of DMTT, including transitional country-by-country safe harbor relief, exclusion for the initial phase of international activity, de-minimis exclusion, and simplified computation safe harbor relief.
Describing key considerations for businesses, Mr. Ashar said that, detailed rules (Executive Regulations) are expected to be published in the coming months, it is now imperative for businesses to assess the impact of the DMTT on their Bahrain presence, evaluate the availability of any reliefs, and prepare for the compliances to be undertaken based on the law read in conjunction with the OECD Model Rules.
Mr. Ashar described, “In terms of taxable income, this is defined in the law as the financial accounting net income or loss for the fiscal year, before making any consolidation adjustments eliminating intra-group transactions, in accordance with the local accounting standards. Detailed rules on calculation of taxable income will be prescribed in line with the OECD Model Rules. Several compliance obligations are specified in the law including obtaining a registration, filing of annual tax returns, and paying taxes in advance over the relevant fiscal year. These compliances are expected to be in addition to the notifications and filings as required by the MNE Group under the OECD Model Rules.”
In addition, the law also provides specific provisions on enforcement via conduct of tax audits, assessments and procedures in relation to litigation and appeals. Mr. Ashar noted that a Tax Objection Committee will be formed for this purpose. Also, penal consequences are laid out in case of defaults, like failure to obtain registration, file tax returns, or submitting incorrect data. Such defaults may trigger stringent administrative fines, without prejudice to criminal liability.
Mr. Ashar further explained that a general anti-avoidance rule empowers the National Bureau of Revenue to disregard any transaction if it is not genuine or its primary purpose is to obtain a tax advantage against the objective of the law. Furthermore, the law specifies certain acts to qualify as ‘tax evasion,’ resulting in onerous consequences including criminal liability for legal persons, if held responsible for such evasion. Dispute resolution through a settlement process is acknowledged.
Mr. Ashar concluded that the Executive Regulations to the law are yet to be issued and are expected to prescribe detailed rules, controls and manner of calculation and application of DMTT in a manner consistent with the Model Rules. He also noted that since the law is published in the Arabic language, his views are based on an unofficial translation of the law.
Cover Story
Trump’s Deregulation Bets, AI Shakeups, and Digital Assets: 2025 in Focus

By Koen Ripping, CEO, Affor Analytics
It is that time of the year again when your mailbox gets filled with outlooks for 2025 from all sides. And it’s no surprise that, again, the year’s outlook comes with a high degree of uncertainty. I’ll refrain from actually giving targets this time, as you can read them from any Wall Street’s bank outlook. And mostly, because it’s hard to get them right. In the past eight years, actual market returns were outside the range of all forecasts compiled seven times, of which the market outperformed five times (source: Bloomberg).
Still, a good case can be made for uncertainty this year. If Trump actually holds up to some of his statements, we could see deregulation on multiple aspects, lower corporate taxes, and of course, tariffs. This will obviously not only impact the US, but could affect economies globally through tit-for-tat tariffs or, for longer term effects, geopolitical actions. Our expectation is that deregulation will happen, and this will feed into a more accommodative and friendly environment for small-to-midsize companies.
This does, however, not mean an end to the Magnificent Seven’s dominance for the coming year. The driver of the outperformance has been a superior earnings growth compared to the rest, which was 33% for Mag7 in 2024 compared to 3% for the rest resulting in an outperformance of around 24% (depending on when you read this). Consensus earnings growth for next year for Mag7 and the rest are respectively 18% versus 12%, resulting in an expected outperformance of 8% for the megacaps from our equity team.
Lower corporate tax could be a potential bull case for the US market, but given the wider pro-growth strategy from the new Trump administration, we don’t see much room for this. Then tariffs are the most significant risk on the otherwise good growth outlook, but we are not expecting an outright tariff war. The tactic will probably be precisely targeted tariffs, where we see an increase in China tariffs and possibly auto tariffs on the EU and Mexico, so retaliatory tariffs will also be the answer. This would add a one-time premium on price levels, as we’ve seen in the first Trump administration, but doesn’t feed through to sustained inflation.
In general, both in the US and EU, continued easing is expected, with falling policy rates supporting economic growth in both areas. This, together with policymakers poised on enhancing growth, and with companies having, like we say in Dutch, cash that is splashing against the baseboards (flush with cash), builds towards a bull case for 2025. Amongst other trends, this will also flow towards three trends I am most familiar with: Digital Assets, Artificial Intelligence, and M&A.
Digital assets – A serious asset in 2025

2024 has been a good year for digital assets. Especially for Bitcoin, where the new BTC spot ETF cleared the way for institutional investors and others that were bound from trading on less conventional exchanges. This inflow of capital made the BTC ETFs surpass the Gold ETFs in AUM within a year, which has been around for over a decade.
Another important factor for digital asset performance is Trump’s election. Since its arrival, the risky asset class has been met with suspicion and disbelief, mainly because of regulatory unclarity and negative publicity. With Trump pledging support to the industry and even mentioning a strategic Bitcoin reserve for the US, markets have been rallying.
A strategic reserve would drastically improve the legitimacy of the asset class as a whole. Though this is still far-fetched, our view is that the new US government will definitely be accommodative in this area. They seem to have gathered a team of experts around him that looks suited to walk the thin line of implementing new regulations while not restricting market participants and early adopting businesses.
After a very dominant Bitcoin in 2024, our digital assets team expects this dominance to decline, while still growing in value, leaving room for alternative tokens to outperform. The first signs of this shift are visible in the pick-up in Ethereum spot prices. This shift correlates with previous cycles of the market, where Bitcoin initially leads, followed by other assets higher on the risk curve. We identified two trends to gain more traction in 2025.
The first trend is tokenization as part of the Real-World Assets sector. This is one of the areas we are also exploring for our funds, like institutions such as BlackRock and JP Morgan already explored for traditional assets such as stocks, bonds, or real estate. By tokenizing these assets on a blockchain, they become more liquid and can be fractalized. The assets become tradable 24/7, and the transaction settlement is fast, cheap, and transparent, allowing for more financial opportunities.
The other one is Artificial Intelligence. Many of the current platforms, such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini are centralized, coming with risks such as privacy issues, potential biases, and single points of failure. Decentralized solutions could be a solution for those who are unwilling to be exposed to those kinds of risks.
If the US takes the lead in accommodative regulation, other nations will follow. Because of this, 2025 could be the year general adoption is accelerated, leaving the digital asset market positioned to do very well.
Artificial Intelligence – Show me the customers
It almost feels like a must mentioning AI as a 2025 trend. Obviously, it has been one of the most traded and talked about trends in past years, but it feels like there is a shift coming. Spending on AI will likely increase, as overall corporate capital investment has been at an annual 2.5%, whereas the average peak capex in the last three trends (energy, housing, and dot-com) was around 8%. So there seems to be enough room there, but valuations in AI are even higher both in public and private markets. Investors will start to look more for ROI and proof-of-concept through a growing customer base.
This will feed into the trend that the focus of investment within the AI sector will change. Where in the past years we’ve seen companies in the infrastructure part of the ecosystem do very well. Our expectation is that emphasis in 2025 will shift more towards the mid- and downstream of AI, focussing on the products and services, and especially to companies where revenues actually get enhanced by the use of AI. That being said, also energy supply for these solutions will become a more important topic.
As a sub-trend, we expect identity to be a hot topic going forward. AI-generated news, images, text, and speech are spreading more and more around the internet. The need for an actual confirmation of real human output (or conversation) will increase. Ironically, this can only be solved by AI.
We have seen adaptation of multiple tools like ChatGPT, but more in a ‘getting-to-know-the-product’ kind of way. More structured solutions built on these LLMs are getting traction now that models are improving at such a fast pace, with an accuracy increase from 10% to 90% from 2021 to 2024 for competition-level math questions (source: Jensen, G., Narayan, A., Greene, A., & Simon, L. (2024). Is an AI Bubble Ahead of Us or Behind Us? Bridgewater.). Beneficiaries will be sectors where the share of tasks that can be handled by AI can reduce labor costs and increase revenue by incorporating this into their business.
All of this does not mean replacing employees, as you have probably read before, but increasing the share of value-added hours. For example, we now utilise AI-ensembles to provide our fundamental team with trading signals. This allows us to react faster to investment opportunities, and also signal more opportunities that are overlooked by humans in the first place.
In general, capital will continue to flow towards AI as a sector, but with a more stricter view on market adoption and value-addition. Ultimately adoption and ability to incorporate these tools efficiently will lead to productivity gains, but in my opinion, this will be a much longer-term trend and won’t crystallize in 2025.
M&A – Consolidation on all fronts
Last but not least, falling interest rates, cash-rich companies, and a less restrictive regulatory environment from a new Trump administration is a fertile ground for a lot more M&A activity, which has already seen a pick-up in 2024. Beneficiaries would be banks that are big in M&A, private equity and credit firms, and private business owners.
In my experience, consolidation, if rightly managed, not only leads to a better market position but can also help companies let their teams focus on their strong suits. To give a personal example, our core strength is creating AI solutions which we apply in fund management. Now, with our partnership with Dutchyard, we can outsource fund management and fundraising, leaving more time to focus on our expertise.
With the upcoming US administration giving a boost to entrepreneur confidence through a less restrictive environment, this is a trend that we expect to continue in 2025.
In conclusion, 2025 shapes up to be generally a decent year for equities globally, but with a bit more unknowns. On the digital assets front, the outlook is good, as Trump might legitimize the asset class as a whole. While AI spending will increase, the focus will shift to actual use cases as users are past the discovery phase.
2025 will belong to those with the muscle to flex less traditional assets and the foresight to leverage innovation, driving value in an evolving financial landscape.
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