Argentina: to practice what it preaches?
Argentine economists loyal to the government’s economic ideals meet in Buenos Aires on Monday for a three-day congress of the Economic Association for Argentine Development.
One of the issues they are likely to be chewing over is one of the big questions Argentina faces after October: how to keep growing, but spend less. Continue reading »
Colombia, Peru bourse fusion fizzles
Latin America’s first full cross-border merger of stock markets has ended with more of a whimper than a bang.
Colombia and Peru announced quietly over the weekend the cancellation of their plans for a corporate merger that would have created a company with market capitalisation of $378bn and trading volumes of $33bn. Continue reading »
Brazil: to cut or not to cut
It’s what millions of Brazilian shoppers have been longing for. Brazil’s interest rate, one of the highest in the world, may finally be cut at the central bank’s next meeting on Wednesday.
All economists polled recently by Reuters had expected the central bank to hold the country’s benchmark interest rate at 12.5 per cent - a 30-month high. Continue reading »
Russia’s oil tax hike: winners and losers
At first glance Russia’s decision to increase the export tax on heavy fuel oil exports looks like another move to milk the oil industry as the government battles the budget deficit.
But the higher duty is also intended to have a positive impact on the oil industry by stimulating investors to upgrade Russia’s aged refineries. Continue reading »
Russia: fitness and the middle class, Wikileaks edition
Over the weekend Wikileaks released a trove of 100,000 new cables, including dispatches from the US Embassy in Moscow. As the cables reveal, US diplomats have been tracking every aspect of Russian society for the past decade. Yet their conclusions read less like a John le Carré novel, and more like Reader’s Digest.
Among the cables is a dispatch devoted exclusivelyto the rise of fitness clubs in Russia, while others look at different trends characterising Russia’s middle class, including their wages, political convictions and ideological beliefs. Continue reading »
Belarus: RBS jumps ship
Belarus is going to have an even more difficult time extricating itself from its growing economic morass after a decision by the Royal Bank of Scotland to refrain from helping the country’s authoritarian government with future capital raising efforts.
RBS, which along with Russia’s Sberbank, France’s BNP Paribas and Germany’s Deutsche Bank formed a syndicate that sold a total of $1.85bn in Belarusian government debt last year and this January, had come under fire from human rights groups for helping fund the government at a time when it was cracking down on the opposition. Continue reading »
CEE: TVs on
What do men in central Europe want on their telly? Central European Media Enterprises thinks it knows. The company, the biggest media group in the CEE region, will soon launch a new channel in the Czech Republic targeting young men.
On the programme? Action films, crime shows, and a bit of sport. If that sounds a bit like a cliché, that’s because it probably is. But then again, clichés sell. And there seems to be plenty of demand for specialised TV channels, with experts forecasting the number of CEE households with cable or satellite TV to grow 50 per cent, or 40m, in the next four years. Continue reading »
Guest post: re-inventing Libya’s economy
By Emad Mostaque of Religãre Capital Markets
As the search for Brother Leader continues, acquisitive minds have turned to the potential of post-Qaddafi Libya.
Learning from the mistakes of previous conflicts, and with significant resources and a clean bureaucratic slate, the stage is set for what is likely to be an intriguing experiment in hydrocarbon-fuelled capitalism. This will create significant opportunities for foreign investors, particularly those who exercise caution. Continue reading »
New York headlines
Asia stocks start week on positive note
Tiger Airways overhauls management in wake of ban
Tunisia: Gulf investor places a bet
Loyalist strongholds test Libya’s new rulers
India’s Piramal eyes $1.5bn overseas deals
Why Islamic bonds don’t sukuk
Islamic financial products may not be an obvious first port of call for investors in troubled times. But sukuk – or ‘Islamic bonds’ – are witnessing sustained demand despite the political upheavals of the Arab Spring-turned-summer and the recent volatility that has hit the global markets.
“We’ve seen a good pick up in activity in the past months and notably, at the height of market volatility”, Mohammed Dawood, head of Islamic capital markets at HSBC, told beyondbrics. Continue reading »
Further reading: Brazil’s forests
Monday’s top picks from the beyondbrics team: an in depth look at the fight over deforestation in Brazil, why consumer spending is not on the cards in China and why a single currency Africa is not a good idea. Continue reading »
Samsung invokes Kubrick in latest Apple tiff
Who would have guessed that a courtroom showdown between two technology companies would ultimately be reduced to an argument about 1960s and 1970s sci-fi?
But that’s just what has happened after Samsung resorted to an entertaining defence in a worsening legal battle to prove its tablets are not copied from Apple.
Its lawyers in California have included images of iPad like objects from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and a 1970s British television series called “The Tomorrow People” in its latest court filing. Continue reading »
Tunisia: Gulf investor places a bet
Gulf investors aren’t slow in looking for post-Arab Spring opportunities. Dubai’s Abraaj Capital is one of the first private equity investors to bet on Tunisia since President Ben Ali was toppled earlier this year.
The company acquired the North African private equity business of Amundi, a global asset manager owned by French banks Societe Generale (GLE:PAR) and Credit Agricole (CRSU:PAR). Continue reading »
Guest post: Emerging markets after Jackson Hole 2011
By Adam Gilmour at Citigroup
Many market players cite last year’s QE2 – first tipped at Ben Bernanke’s 2010 Jackson Hole address – as a major force behind the wave of money that flowed out of the US, and into higher-growth emerging markets where yields were substantially higher.
On Friday the Fed chairman fell short of implying that there would be another round of quantitative easing or QE3. So what now for emerging markets? Continue reading »
London headlines
* Loyalist strongholds test Libya’s new rulers
* India’s Piramal eyes $1.5bn overseas deals
* Sinopec net tops estimates on fuel production
* China set to challenge global wind industry
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