Europe’s longest serving leader stepped down on July 19, when President Murtaza Rakhimov of the republic of Bashkortostan in the Urals region of Russia was replaced after 20 years in office. Rakhimov, 76, had long been rumoured to be on his way out, and when the moment finally came, it appears that he had to [Read more...]

BMI’s newest core view is that private healthcare spending as a percentage of total healthcare expenditure in emerging markets will decrease over the medium term. Governments in these countries increasingly appreciate the value of a healthy population and are boosting investment in medical services, such as pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, doctors, nurses, clinics and hospitals.

Notable public sector [Read more...]

Brazil has just hosted the second annual BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) summit on April 15-16, but I think there are good reasons to doubt how much strength this grouping actually has in terms of changing the world – at least in a collective fashion. Below, I list some thoughts about BRICs as a concept:
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Monday’s twin bombings in the Moscow Metro demonstrate that the war in the North Caucasus is neither over nor just a conflict in a peripheral part of Russia. The Moscow attacks came just four months after the Moscow-St Petersburg railway was bombed, showing that Islamist terrorists are capable of carrying out their threats to take [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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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...]

Most people are well aware that the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries are big recipients of foreign direct investment (FDI). But they are also big sources of FDI.

In 2009, for the first time, emerging market outbound mergers and acquisitions (M&A) flows outpaced inbound M&A flows, reaching US$131.8bn, according to Dealogic. Most of these [Read more...]