Tag Archive for 'Russia'

BRICs at 10

Published on November 30, 2011 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

So, was he right? Ten years ago Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs looked at four growth economies – Brazil, China, India and Russia – put their first letters into an acronym, and the Brics (as a concept) were born.

So how have they fared? What if you invested in the Brics ten years ago – where would you be now? Chart of the week finds out. There are a myriad of ways of looking at this, but beyondbrics is going to be hard-headed and stick to equities and GDP.

A quick look at the MSCI indices for the four Brics since 2001 shows that they have comfortably outperformed the S&P 500. If you invested $100 at the time of O’Neill’s report in November 2001 in each of the four Brics, you would now have $674 from Brazil, $451 from China, $459 from India and $414 from Russia. Your 100 S&P bucks? Worth $112 [Read more].

Russian internet biggest in Europe; will earnings follow?

Published on November 14, 2011 in High Tech & Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The moment Mail.ru and Yandex investors have been waiting for has arrived: Russia, at long last, has finally surpassed Germany to become the largest internet market in Europe.

According to comScore, the research firm, Russia had 50.8m internet users in September versus 50.1m users in Germany. And, luckily for those who bought into Russian internet stocks such as Mail.ru and Yandex at sky-high valuations, the market still has a lot of growth left.

With broadband penetration set to reach 60m people in Russia this year – a third of the population – there is still a large swath of the country where the internet revolution has yet to take hold [Source].

Innovation, made in Russia

Published on October 13, 2011 in Global Strategy and High Tech & Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Skolkovo, just outside of Moscow, wants to become Russia’s Silicon Valley.

The first trip to the Silicon Valley often has a profound impact on foreign entrepreneurs. But for 13 Russian startups currently touring the region, visiting the Valley isn’t just about changing their own point of view; it’s about changing their country.

The idea is to encourage young Russians to take risks, pursue IT opportunities, and maybe adopt a little bit of Silicon Valley culture in the process. Like the idea that failing with a startup doesn’t mean you need to change careers. IT Cluster Deputy Director for Education and Research Katia Gaika told me that Silicon Valley’s embrace of failing is very foreign to people in Russia. “Failure is not acceptable,” she said.

The startups, all part of the state-sponsored Skolkovo IT Cluster, are accompanied by a reality TV crew that documents their every move [Read more].

The Emerging Online Giants

Published on July 10, 2010 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

At first glance the three firms could not look more different.

DST was created in 2005 when two Russian internet investors, Yuri Milner and Gregory Finger, pooled their interests in mail.ru, a Russian web portal. Today the firm controls many of the country’s leading websites and boasts an interesting mix of owners, including Goldman Sachs and Alisher Usmanov, a Russian billionaire, who holds 27%.

Based in Cape Town, Naspers is nearly 100 years old and is the publisher of the Daily Sun, South Africa’s biggest newspaper. But it is one of the most ambitious old-media companies anywhere in its move online. It still makes most of its sales—28 billion rand ($3.6 billion) in the year to March—from print and pay-television, but it uses the cash to buy online firms.

Tencent hails from Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. Founded in 1998, it had revenues of $1.8 billion in 2009 [Full article here].

A Russian Odyssey: Early Day Investors

Published on December 6, 2009 in International Business and International Finance. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Hermitage_Bill_BrowderRussia’s default in 1997 and the stock market devalued rapidly. Browder (founder of Hermitage investment fund) lost, by his estimate, 90% of his money during this time that he had invested in Russia. More onerous, was the wholesale “stealing” by the Russian oligarchs.

Rather than put up with this, Browder met with company employees to hear first-hand about the scams that were going on within the companies. Watch the story yourself at the bottom of this post (7min). For a complete coverage of Browder’s speech at Standford GSB click here.

Browder started with $25 million in 1996, achieving almost tenfold gains in 18 months and then raised $1billion from new investors. At one stage the pot totalled $4 billion and Hermitage became Russia’s biggest foreign portfolio investor.

However, Mr Browder offended someone with great power – he insists that he still does not know who – and in November 2005 was refused re-entry into Russia. Since then Browder is one of the biggest enemies of the Russian state. [Source 1] [Source 2].

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