Urban World: Cities And The Rise Of The Consuming Class
July 13th, 2012
Courtesy of McKinsey, a new report exploring the impact of urban cities around the world that will drive dramatic growth, demographic changes, and consumption over the next generation: Cities have long been the world’s economic dynamos, but today the speed and scale of their expansion are unprecedented. Through a combination of consumption and investment in […]
Read more »Mongolia
July 11th, 2012
Via EM PE, a look at Mongolia: In the land of blue skies, a niche investment opportunity awaits for first movers in an unspoiled market of growing SMEs primarily in the infrastructure and services sectors. I recently spent a few days in Mongolia as part of our investigation into making potential fund investments in the […]
Read more »Buying Behaviors of Emerging Middle Classes
July 10th, 2012
Courtesy of Kellogg Insight, some commentary on how consumers in developing nations choose their brands: A key feature of the modern world is the “emerging middle class”—the demographic group resulting from the rise into relative economic comfort of once-poor populations in developing nations. The phenomenon—particularly notable in Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia—has obvious interest for […]
Read more »Africa’s True Mobile Revolution: Yet to Start
July 4th, 2012
Via the Harvard Business Review, an interesting commentary on the potential for mobile-enabled growth in Africa: The United States economy is nine times the size of Africa’s, but Africa has twice as many mobile phones. This tantalizing statistic would seem to indicate that, in the mobile era, Africa’s time has come. But the mobile subscriber […]
Read more »Africa’s Shaky Resurgence
July 1st, 2012
Via STRATFOR (subscription required), an interesting look at Africa, a region that many have been optimistically positioning as a strong market in the near term: Emotion clouds analysis about Africa. Because so many in the West want to erase the stains of racism and slavery, there is a tendency to announce optimism about Africa even […]
Read more »Failed States Index: A Failed Index Or Guide To Frontier Markets?
June 29th, 2012
Via Foreign Policy and Fund for Peace, a look at the 2012 Failed States Index. Here are the top 10: 1. Somalia As the situation in Somalia continued to deteriorate in 2011, the country remains at the top of the Failed States Index for the fifth year in succession. Ten out of twelve of […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.