12th Annual EFG Hermes One on One conference’s poll results - Can MENA escape boom & bust of oil markets- Yes -  Consensus sees oil at USD40 at end-16;MENA earnings to fall 10-20%: Most participants expected oil to end 2016 at USD40/bbl, in line with our view, and they also believed that we are unlikely to see oil at USD100/bbl anytime soon. The audience expected MENA earnings to fall by 10-20% in 2016, which is significantly below consensus of 13% growth. We see downside risk to our base case of 2% earnings growth and see the potential for aggregate MENA earnings to fall by up to 10%. -  Despite low oil, USD pegs are expected to stay; reforms will continue: Despite consensus view on lower oil for longer, most participants (68%) expected GCC pegs to remain unchanged by 2018. However, they expected reforms and efforts for revenue diversification to continue. Most participants (44%) expect to see corporate taxes introduced in the GCC by 2018, and that subsidy reforms will carry on in Saudi Arabia in 2016 (64%). We agree with the view that GCC pegs are safe in the medium term, and we also see a continuation of subsidy cuts that started in 2015 in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region. However, we believe that we are unlikely to see corporate taxes in the GCC by 2018, as we feel it might take longer (maybe by 2020), and that some countries will move before others, with the UAE or Kuwait as the most-likely pioneers to introduce corporate taxes as they have both already raised the issue. -  Equities the preferred asset class; Healthcare sector of choice: Out of five major assets classes, respondents saw equities (46% of participants) as the asset of choice for the next three years. We also prefer equities over other asset classes given that we are in negative yield territory with returns on 10-year US treasuries below 2%, while equity yields can reach up to 4.5% in MENA. Most respondents (45%) expected the healthcare sector to outperform other sectors in the region this year. We are currently overweight on telecoms in our MENA Top 20 list with STC our top pick, as we favour names with low leverage and high FCF yield. Having said that, we believe that healthcare is a non-cyclical sector where growth will not be impacted by falling oil prices, and we have recently added Dallah to our MENA Top 20 list (EFG Hermes)