EM fund flows: anchorless
Emerging market equity and bond flows have looked at lot like driftwood of late. Investors at the mercy of Europe’s credit crisis have moved their money in and out of emerging markets with little direction. EM equity funds saw outflows of US$1.1bn this week, reversing three weeks of inflows according to data from EPFR, the US-based fund tracker.
Meanwhile EM bond funds, which remain a relative safe haven, saw inflows US$534.8m in the week ending on Wednesday. Continue reading »
From e-CPFs to SPEDs: why Brazil’s companies spend 2,600 hours a year filing taxes
The FT’s São Paulo office recently spent several days gripped in nervous agitation, topped off by a morning of panic as drawers, shelves and filing cabinets were ransacked in search of something called an “e-CPF”, a digital certificate needed to file some annual accounts to something called “the SPED”. Nobody really knew what they were looking for, or indeed what they were talking about. Continue reading »
Serbia and Croatia: no love lost, but money to be made
The capture of Goran Hadzic, the Croatian Serb war crimes suspect extradited to The Hague on Friday, closes a big chapter in the book of tensions between the two biggest former Yugoslav republics.
Serbia’s failure to find him until this week was a constant irritant for Croatia, among other lingering grievances since the 1990s break-up. Continue reading »
Guest post: time to revisit Turkey
By Hans-Paul Bürkner and Burak Tansan of Boston Consulting Group
For all its success, Turkey is commanding less attention from multinationals than China or India. That should change. In these troubled times, Turkey, with its rapid growth, young population and expanding middle class, offers multinationals opportunities they are in danger of missing. Continue reading »
Russia eases up on IPO regulation
For the past few years, Russian groups – and their foreign bankers – have moaned about increasingly strict limits for companies seeking to issue equity outside the country.
But a new proposal put forward by the regulation reveals that Russia’s financial markets regulator is doing a complete u-turn. According to the new proposal, Russian companies may soon be able to fore go a mandatory listing in Moscow to issue 100 per cent of their shares outside the country.A sigh of relief can be heard by foreign bankers and Russian corporate leaders alike.
New York headlines
News Corp saga has a CEE twist
Apple surpasses Lenovo revenue in China
Renault considers third car plant in Russia
Foreign investors upbeat on Lima
Avtovaz takes stock of 45 years of Ladas Continue reading »
News Corp saga: the CEE twist
The embattled Rupert Murdoch is selling his advertising business in Russia as the phone-hacking scandal drags on and new allegations regarding his News Corp emerge every day.
News Corp (NWSA:NSQ) has sold a 79 per cent stake in its Russian outdoor advertising company News Outdoor to Russian state-owned VTB Capital and Alfa Group, after years of looking for possible investors. Continue reading »
Rmb: Falun Gong’s new voice
Banned since 1999 and considered an evil cult by China’s ruling Communist Party, the Falun Gong spiritual movement has learnt to be creative in getting its message out to the Chinese people.
In past years the group – which combines elements of Buddhism, mystic Taoism and qigong breathing exercises – has hijacked television stations and distributed flyers in secret on the street. But lately it has turned to the thing that underpins China’s booming economy: the Rmb banknote. Continue reading »
StanChart: the Koreans are coming!
By Christian Oliver and Song Jung-a in Seoul
Peter Sands, chief executive of Standard Chartered, had better lock his door. The Koreans are coming to London!
It’s the end of the fourth week of a strike by Standard Chartered workers in South Korea and it’s hard to work out whether the strikers or management are going to blink first. Both look grimly determined. Standard Chartered executives say the strike almost broke down in the early hours of Friday after infighting between union factions. Continue reading »
Further reading: hero comes home
Friday’s top picks from the beyondbrics team: middle-class uprising as a global threat, what makes low-cost markets so costly, and the homecoming of a Chinese basketball hero. Continue reading »
India: fancy a pint? At that price, I’ll have vodka
Price-sensitive Indian customers are hard to win and harder to keep. Despite rising disposable incomes they respond quickly to rising prices, flitting between products at the slightest provocation.
Take the drinking habits of the new middle classes. Only quite recently won over to beer, they are now downing vodkas and tonics and cocktails instead as prices shift in their favour. Continue reading »
A gala dinner on London’s Park Lane this week showed how the balance of power in world cricket has shifted from England to India. In cricket and in much else, argues Mihir Bose: “The shift is unique, and irreversible. The east can now take something western, and make the west a supplicant. We had better get used to it.” Continue reading »
London headlines
* Iran threatens to block oil supplies to India
* Renault considers third car plant in Russia
* Foreign investors upbeat on Lima
* China’s Spring Airlines to raise $1.2bn in IPO
* Apple surpasses Lenovo revenue in China Continue reading »
Contagion is the word on everyone’s lips as the European Union tries to manage the Greek debt crisis.
But it is not just the eurozone that is at risk. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development warned on Friday that an escalation of the Greek debt crisis could have a knock-on effect eastward on countries in “emerging” Europe. Continue reading »
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