Forget Emerging Markets, Frontier Markets Still Rising

Capital is heading home. Trade deficits are soaring. Reform has stalled. And the easy years of catch-up growth have come to an end.  There are no shortage of reasons why the markets have turned bearish on the emerging markets, and there are plenty of explanations for why they have been so badly hit at the start of 2014.  There is one thing that does not quite add up, however. While the emerging markets have been tumbling, the frontier markets have been doing as well as they ever did. They easily out-performed most other assets last year, and have carried on rising even as a wider crisis has rippled through the developing world. 

http://tinyurl.com/m7s7mnv

Brighter IPO Outlook to Cushion Emerging Markets

From Tunis to Beijing, emerging market companies are gearing up to tap equity investors for capital, potentially grabbing the interest of stock buyers who might otherwise retreat on the ebb tide of cheap U.S. funding. This year is shaping up to be a strong one for new equity issuance in the developing world, defying a disappointing start in broader emerging equities after three years of underperformance. According to Thomson Reuters data, emerging companies have raised $2.3 billion of new equity so far this year, more than five times the amount seen in the same period in 2013.

http://tinyurl.com/nta8hvm

Upgrading the Philippine Economy

With much of the developed world hobbling under the burden of massive public debt, The Economist couldn't resist the opportunity to encourage a global, multi-trillion-dollar "new wave of privatizations, this time centered on property." Unsatisfied with earlier waves of privatization, which focused on the banking sector, transport, telecoms, and utilities. It raised the specter of 21st century Thatcherism, where privatization allows governments to"cut their debts and improve their credit ratings," and, in the process, enhance "the economy's efficiency by boosting competition and by applying private-sector capital and skills to newly privatized assets."

http://tinyurl.com/klhumgm