Author Archive for ron

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India: outpacing China by 2013?

Published on October 29, 2011 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , .

After months of bad news flow – high inflation! interest rate hikes! corruption! high petrol prices! weak currency! – India is finally getting some good news, even if it’s a good two years off.

In 2013, according to an Ernst & Young report released Monday, India will grow at 9.5 per cent, bouncing back from this year’s 7.2 per cent, and outpacing China’s projected 9.2 per cent.

But the report’s projections might be a tad optimistic, given that they are premised on: 1) whether India’s inflation – which hit 10.6 per cent for food articles earlier this month – will fall by the end of this year, and 2) that the US and EU economies do not fall into recession [Source].

Roubini: Goodbye China, hello Indonesia

Published on October 29, 2011 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

If economist Nouriel Roubini was a betting man, he’d be cashing out of China and doubling down on Indonesia.

On his first trip to south-east Asia’s largest economy, Roubini argued the case for countries with growth models like Indonesia, where nearly two-thirds of GDP is domestic consumption, rather than China, at roughly one third and, as he has previously warned , “could be headed toward a hard landing.”

On the other hand, ”China needs to move away from the growth model and find balanced growth of the other emerging markets, like Indonesia, India and Brazil,” he said.

“It is the time of rising power of the emerging markets and emerging Asia is the fastest growing region in the world. Indonesia is a country that can be very important in the global economy. By the end of the decade it will be the 10th largest economy and by 2030, it could be the 6th.” [Source]

Klout raising new $30M round at a $200M valuation

Published on October 28, 2011 in Real-Time Web and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Klout, the startup best known for its ability to measure a person’s online influence, might be raising a new, third round of investment that would significantly add to the company’s total funding and valuation.

Klout works by measuring a person’s activity on a variety of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn Google+ and others. Based on that individual’s interaction within those social networks, Klout calculates the true reach of that person’s communications and issues them a 1 to 100 Klout score.

A company spokesperson told VentureBeat it doesn’t comment on rumors. However, the new round, possibly led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from IVP, might be as high as $30 million at a $200 million valuation, according to a report from Business Insider [Source].

China: growing taste for European M&A

Published on October 27, 2011 in Emerging Markets and Global Strategy. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Chinese companies are increasing their appetite for corporate acquisitions in Europe.

As Jamil Anderlini writes in today’s FT, the Rhodium Group, an economic consultancy, predicts Chinese groups will invest up to $1,000bn in overseas acquisitions over the next decade, with a big slice of this investment heading to Europe.

In the past decade, China has mostly focused on companies in the US and Australia, as the chart below shows. But wobbly stock markets and declining valuations in Europe have also made assets there attractive.

Europe is China’s most targeted region this year, attracting more than $12bn via 64 deals, and accounting for nearly 30 per cent of all Chinese outbound M&A in terms of deal value, according to Dealogic. This is up from just $2.5bn via 35 deals during the same period a earlier year, accounting for only 6 per cent of total Chinese outbound M&A [Read more].

Shopping by phone at South Korea’s virtual grocery

Published on October 26, 2011 in International Business. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Online shopping is nothing new, especially in plugged-in South Korea. But one company says it’s going further. It’s testing out a virtual supermarket in a public place.

At Seolleung underground station in Seoul, there’s a row of brightly lit billboards along the platform, with hundreds of pictures of food and drink – everything from fruit and milk to instant noodles and pet food.

Standing on the platform, a man in his 60s who gives his name as Mr Bae, says it looks to him like an advertisement for a convenience store.

When I explain it’s a virtual supermarket that you access with your smartphone, he doesn’t seem impressed. He says he doesn’t have a smartphone, so it’s not for him. But he says, it’s a good idea for younger Koreans.

And that’s who this virtual supermarket is primarily designed for, according to Homeplus, the South Korean affiliate of the British supermarket chain Tesco [Read more].

KKR Said to Seek Up to $6 Billion for Second Asia Buyout Fund

Published on October 25, 2011 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

KKR & Co., the U.S. buyout firm co- founded by Henry Kravis, is seeking as much as $6 billion for its second Asian buyout fund, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plan.

The firm, based in New York, is planning to wrap up the first round of fundraising by the middle of next year, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. KKR gathered $4 billion for its first fund making Asia investments in 2007.

Private-equity firms attracted $25.6 billion for Asia- Pacific funds this year through Aug. 31, compared with $38 billion in all of 2010, according to market researcher Preqin Ltd. Fund-raising in the region peaked at $88.4 billion in 2008, before the impact of the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. rippled through global markets, the London-based firm said in a report last month [Read more].

Seven billion and counting

Published on October 25, 2011 in International Business. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

On October 31, earth will gain its seven billionth inhabitant, according to official UN population projections.Of course, the data are not really accurate enough to predict the arrival of human number 7bn to the nearest day, or even year, but the symbolic moment has aroused an upsurge in the debate around “overpopulation” that has ebbed and flowed since Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798 [Read more].

Economic and political changes, environmental and migratory pressures, debates about social redistribution and urban planning: many current balances will shift and pose important new challenges to policymakers, politicians and neighbour states. But these trends will vary greatly between different countries, ages, genders and social groups.

Looking at the fast-rising graph of the world’s inhabitants, it seems hard to believe the trend will even slow. Yet only two centuries ago – at about the time Thomas Malthus, the English scholar, was warning of pending famine, disease and war triggered by overpopulation – the earth’s inhabitants numbered fewer than 1bn people. Since then, the numbers have risen ever faster: doubling to the current 7bn in less than 50 years.

The onus is on the wealthier countries to take the lead in modifying lifestyles and developing new technologies to tackle global warming and the depletion of natural resources. The consequences of inaction will fall significantly on the poor, who may ultimately be forced to develop their own innovative solutions to problems for which industrialised countries still have no ready answers [Read more].

Beyond BRICS – FT’s emerging markets hub

Published on October 25, 2011 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Should the Brics bail out the eurozone? Has Chinese growth stalled? Does it pay to play golf in Vietnam?

The FT beyondbrics hub is the place to find out. A news / blog hybrid, it brings together news and views from over 40 correspondents across the emerging markets world [Read more].

Meet the young innovators who are changing the world

Published on October 25, 2011 in High Tech & Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Each year Technology Review honors 35 innovators under 35 who are tackling important problems in transformative ways. Candidates come from around the globe, some from regional TR35 competitions run by TR’s international editions. Find the ranking here.

Selecting Technology Review’s yearly list of 35 innovators under the age of 35 is a difficult but rewarding process. We search for candidates around the world who are opening up new possibilities in technology, and then we seek the advice of a panel of expert judges before finally selecting the winners. We look for people who are tackling important problems in transformative ways [Read more].

Sometimes that transformation comes from developing an entirely new technology, such as graphene transistors that could one day replace silicon devices in microprocessors. Sometimes it means using existing technologies in novel ways, such as creating an effective way for local businesses to advertise electronically or organizing social networks to build up a community of patients suffering from a disease.

The hottest new internet companies are growing up outside the USA

Published on October 25, 2011 in High Tech & Media and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: .

High-value financings for venture-backed private internet and digital media companies seem to be happening at a rapid pace. Dropbox, Tumblr, AirBnB, Foursquare, and Spotify have all raked in big fundings and attained record valuations in recent months. Meanwhile, public investors are decidedly less sanguine. The Nasdaq Composite index is flat for the year – and the average internet and digital media company is down 50% from 52-week highs.

As you can see from the chart, only six of the 116 publicly-traded internet companies are projected by analysts to achieve over 30% top-line growth in 2011 and 2012 and to achieve 2012 EBITDA margins of at least 30%. That means only 5% of the current crop of public internet companies are in the top echelon in terms of profitability and growth.

Let’s take a further look at these six companies: Baidu, Tencent, Yandex, Mail.ru, Qihoo 360 Technology, and MercadoLibre. What do these companies all have in common? Most obviously, they all operate outside the U.S. Second, they are being richly rewarded by public investors – all six are presently valued at at least 10x revenue – a very meaningful premium over the group of internet and digital media companies as a whole, where median revenue multiples fall in the 1-3x range, depending on subset [Read more].