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Emerging Markets

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Emerging Markets

A Practical Guide for Corporations, Lenders, and Investors

Wiley,

15 min read
9 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Investing in an emerging country requires foresight, vision, patience, knowledge and an extremely high tolerance for risk.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Former investment banker Jeffrey C. Hooke now carries out financial deals in the developing world. He describes the potential for doing business or investing in the world’s 156 emerging markets. Hooke is realistic about the great risks – such as unstable governments in impoverished countries – but he highlights future potential. His book is a solidly researched and clearly written guide to assessing the business climate and deciding what types of products make the most sense in different developing countries. After an overview of the nature of emerging markets, why companies want to participate in or avoid these markets, and how to invest and make loans there, he looks at particular markets in Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. getAbstract recommends this worthy book to those considering working or investing in emerging markets, but academics or readers interested in how business is conducted in foreign places may also be intrigued.

Summary

The Nature of Emerging Markets

Emerging markets, poor countries in various stages of development, are sometimes called developing nations, low-income countries and the Third World. Currently, 156 developing nations represent 84% of the world’s population and live on 76% of its landmass. Generally, in these countries, per capita income is lower than $3,000 and household income is around $4,000. Most Third World residents don’t own the things taken for granted in developed countries, such as a phone, a home or a car. Well-paying jobs are rare and so is education or training. These countries have little technology and a very small industrial base. Their economies depend largely on agriculture, with most people outside the cities barely subsisting on small farms. A small, wealthy elite holds most of the developing world’s wealth, and maintains its rank through a rigid class structure and repressive, authoritarian government.

Though emerging nations are difficult places for Westerners to do business, their natural resources and low-cost labor supplies make them important to the dominant economies of the U.S., Japan and Western Europe. Increasingly, multinational corporations...

About the Author

Jeffrey C. Hooke had been an investor banker for 10 years when he began doing deals in the developing world in 1991. He initially worked with the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s $8 billion private sector affiliate, where he investigated and closed large transactions in Latin America. In 1998, he began working with the $1.8 billion AIG-Asian Infrastructure Fund, the largest private equity partnership devoted to emerging markets. He arranged large equity financings in China, Thailand and Korea. These experiences led to the book.

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