Chess genius, 15, on Russia’s rich list
The annual of Russian Forbes rich list reads like a who’s who of Rublyovskoye shosse, Moscow’s wealthiest drag, and London’s Belgravia. At the very top of the list are old favourites: Mikhail Prokhorov, Oleg Deripaska, Alisher Usmanov, Roman Abramovich.
But look a little further down and you’ll see the name of Deni Bazhaev, Russia’s youngest multimillionare on the list at the tender age of, gulp, 15.
Argentine grape seeks world markets
It was originally planted by the Romans in southwest France nearly 2,000 years ago, but the Malbec grape has long left its European roots behind. Today, it is the signature varietal of Argentina and one of the world’s fastest-growing and best-loved wines.
To toast its ascent and future prospects, Wines of Argentina, an industry exporters’ group, has declared this Sunday “Malbec World Day” and is organising wine tastings from Armenia to Australia, and from Serbia to Shanghai. Continue reading »
Balkan food fight: Mercator v Agrokor
Croatia’s Agrokor and Slovenia’s Mercator are playing a risky game of one-upmanship for retail supremacy in the fragmented markets of the former Yugoslavia.
As a bid deadline expired on Friday for a crucial 23.3 per cent stake in Mercator that is up for sale, Agrokor appeared to be the only would-be buyer. Yet the Slovenian side – reluctant to succumb to a similar-sized regional competitor – announced an extension and continued looking for other options. Continue reading »
CEE: whither the zloty, leu and forint?
The currencies of central and eastern Europe are on a roll. In the last month, the Polish zloty is up 3.4 per cent against the euro, the Hungarian forint 2.6 per cent, and the Romanian leu 2.6 per cent.
Even allowing for bigger gains in some other emerging market currencies – Brazil’s real is up 6.5 per cent against the US dollar since mid-March – these are eye-catching numbers for a fairly stable region. What do they tell us about the CEE economies and where do they go from here? Continue reading »
Uruguay: time to “wallop” inflation
Uruguay must roll up its sleeves and get to grips with a “soapy eel” – otherwise known as inflation.
That is the characteristically blunt message from José Mujica, Uruguay’s president, who used his typical tell-it-like-it-is language on a radio show to promise to step up the fight against inflation, which he also called a “scourge” and vowed not to let inflation run out of control. Continue reading »
India’s 14-year-old “unputdownable” Warren Buffett fan
He’s only 14 and he has just published an acclaimed book – about the same length as George Orwell’s Animal Farm – about Warren Buffett, the billionaire US investor.
He was inspired by his father who regards Buffett as the “ultimate investment guru”, and finally got to shake hands with the Sage of Omaha on his visit to India last month.
But what is as remarkable about the literary debut of Aryaman Dalmia, a Delhi school boy, is his book’s endorsements. These have come in from India’s senior financiers, top politicians and even a former deputy of the central bank. Continue reading »
Deutsche’s controversial renminbi bull
Brokerage houses in Hong Kong love to turn out optimistic projections on the rapid growth of the offshore market in Chinese currency-denominated assets in Hong Kong.
Among the most optimistic is Jun Ma, Deutsche Bank’s chief economist for the region. Speaking at an Asia Society lunch in Hong Kong, Ma said renminbi assets could grow tenfold by the end of 2012 to Rmb700bn, while deposits are likely to swell fivefold to Rmb2,000bn over the same period. Continue reading »
Deal of the day: angling for acquisitions, KKR goes fishin’ in Vietnam
By Andrew Cheng of mergermarket
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts made its first foray into Vietnam this week with the acquisition of a 10 per cent stake in Masan Consumer, the country’s biggest producer of fish sauce, for $159m.
The deal, announced on Wednesday, will be the private equity group’s fourth investment in Southeast Asia and its first in Vietnam. Continue reading »
Baidu’s traffic-grabbing non-microblog
Baidu, China’s largest online search engine, has left users slightly confused. On Friday, it tweaked Shuoba, a platform resembling Twitter which allows users to post 140-character messages, to no longer demand personal information such as their ID numbers.
While some online media jumped on the changes as evidence that finally Baidu was following in the tracks of Sina and other web portals to launch a competitive microblog, the company denies it. Robin Li, founder and chief executive (pictured), stubbornly insists that Shuoba – which means something like “Talk!” in Chinese – is not a microblog at all. Continue reading »
BRICS summit: a golf ban
Attendees at this year’s third annual Brics leaders’ meeting on the southern Chinese resort island of Hainan were greeted in their hotel rooms with a small but telling example of the pitfalls of doing business in an authoritarian state with weak and unpredictable legal institutions.
It was only a note to guests about television channels. But it spoke volumes. Continue reading »
Indian inflation: scaling the heights
India was hoping for double digit growth to transform its people’s lives, not double digit inflation to make already tough lives tougher.
Yet the latter is what, according to some analysts, India’s 1.2bn people may have been landed with at a time when Asia’s third largest economy is scaling new heights. Continue reading »
New York headlines
* Glencore lifts veil on market dominance
* China first-quarter GDP grows 9.7%
* Google faces S Korea antitrust complaint
* Goldman expects bank licence in India Continue reading »
Fund flows: EM in favour
Investors still seem to like emerging equities despite concerns about inflation and rising interest rates. As the latest numbers from EPFR, the fund flows research group, show, around $2bn went into EM equity funds in the week ending Wednesday.
That’s less than the whopping $5.7bn recorded the previous week. But, as Citigroup points out, it still makes $10bn in three weeks – or over one third of the ‘shock’ outflow of the previous nine weeks. Continue reading »
China: still hot, markets sweating
Investors have largely taken in their stride China’s highest inflation for three years – 5.4 per cent in March – and bigger-than-expected first quarter GDP growth of 9.7 per cent.
But fears Beijing may now have to accelerate monetary tightening – and other emerging markets facing similar challenges – cast a bit of a pall over global markets on Friday. Ft.com’s markets story was headlined “Risk assets struggle on rate rise prospects”. Says it all, really. Continue reading »
Further reading: commodities + China
Friday’s picks from the beyondbrics team: a big day for resources and their impact on emerging markets as Glencore reveals the scale of its dominance of global commodities markets and Bob Dudly survives a grilling at BP’s AGM. Plus the not entirely inexorable rise of China. Continue reading »
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