Having just returned from my latest business trip to Dubai, I have to report that confidence in general remains very subdued. For sheer tragic parade-raining, bubble-bursting symbolism, you can’t beat the Burj Khalifa tower (renamed at the last minute to appease the neighbours and then closed soon after opening for ‘technical reasons’ – for three [Read more...]

With bad news out of Greece and other southern eurozone states casting a long shadow over much of Europe in recent months, finding relative value has become more difficult. Certainly, equities and currencies do not offer the same buying opportunities that they did during the Q209-Q309 rally.

However, a weak growth outlook on the back of [Read more...]

In an era where a global financial crisis has been caused not by developments in Russia, South-East Asia or Argentina, but by banking insolvency in the United States and sovereign default risks in a eurozone member state, namely Greece, our panel of senior commentators discusses what it means to be an ‘emerging market’. Justin Patrie, [Read more...]

 

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For all the doom and gloom surrounding European markets on the back of the Greek sovereign crisis and concomitant sell-off in euro and sterling, emerging market currencies in the region still look bid. Traditionally, when EUR/US$ has weakened, so too have benchmark central European cross rates such as PLN/EUR and CZK/EUR. However, this correlation has [Read more...]

On this week’s podcast, Business Monitor Chief Economist Tim Cooper, Head of Europe Analysis Justin Patrie and Senior Europe Analyst Bruce Jeffery discuss European investment strategy on the back of the Greek fiscal crisis and news of an EU support package for Athens. In addition to providing analysis on the most recent market developments in [Read more...]

 

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Russia is currently in the midst of a political transition that has already seen or will soon see several veteran regional leaders retire. Until 2004, Russia’s regions had direct elections for presidents and governors, as is the case in the US. However, after the Beslan school siege in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, [Read more...]

We have previously highlighted on Risk Watchdog how the aftermath of the global financial crisis has exposed the structural imbalances in many developed economies, while also singling out those emerging markets which are in a fundamentally sound position to exploit the global economic recovery. Poland and Greece are certainly two prime examples at opposite ends [Read more...]