It’s hard to believe how conditions have changed CEE, you’re acting a little bit deranged. Where once there were dreams of economic convergence We now have nightmares, of defaults and divergence. As growth turns to slowdown, and slowdown to recession I hesitate to look forward, for the likely depression. Ok, enough armchair poetry. Let’s get… [Read more]

I am becoming increasingly concerned about the rising threat of strikes and demonstrations in Emerging Europe. Business Monitor International (BMI) has long raised a number of structural problems in the region – endemic corruption, nepotism and flawed election procedures. However, with unemployment set to rise, the erosion of real wealth and governments’ perceived mismanagement of… [Read more]

Of the 32 sovereign states in the emerging Europe region, 19 maintain fixed pegs or heavily managed exchange rate regimes (eight others have floating currencies and five utilise the euro). Thus far, only five of the 19 have made significant devaluations despite a clear regional trend of capital outflows, slowing growth and rapidly declining export… [Read more]

Amid the continuation of the carnage on global financial market benchmarks in October, it has come to little surprise that emerging market currencies have universally suffered as investors shift asset allocations to perceived safe havens in the US and eurozone. Well, almost universally. One currency in the emerging Europe realm has failed to depreciate against… [Read more]

Literally within minutes of returning from an emerging Europe investment conference where the ad nauseam theme was that the ‘economic fundamentals are essentially sound’, I learn that the National Bank of Hungary has hiked its policy rate from 8.5% to 11.5% to prop up the currency. Well, the fundamentals must be sound if a central… [Read more]