Emerging Markets

ISRAEL     Tel Aviv: Aiming for greater integration with world markets. Israel’s minister of finance Ronnie Bar-On has approved a legislative amendment that will enable foreign portfolio management companies to serve Israeli clients and operate in Israel without the ...

Dr News       Beijing-based Baidu.com, China’s leading Internet search provider, was the most actively traded depositary receipt in the world last year, according to The Bank of New York Mellon’s annual year-end report on the DR industry. In ...

China       Morgan Stanley: Subprime losses have been plugged by China Investment Corp.       China will allow foreign brokerage firms to play stronger roles in the country’s securities markets, according to new guidelines that took effect ...

Peru     Lessons learned? Investors will be looking closely at the assets behind Peru’s mortgage-backed securities. While most global markets are seeking to shield themselves from shockwaves emanating from the US subprime home loan and residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) ...

China     Filling up: China’s consumers may face shortages soon. While the Chinese horoscope attributes such auspicious qualities as intelligence, charisma and compassion to those born in the Year of the Rat, which begins on February 7, economists are ...

COUNTRY REPORT / RUSSIA Having hand picked his successor as Russian president, Vladimir Putin has assured the country there will be a smooth transition of power. How much power he will retain remains in question.   Oil has filled Russia's ...

News The lure of potentially high returns at lower prices than the big emerging markets is attracting value-seeking institutional investors to smaller “frontier” markets such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Angola and Mongolia. “To me, China and Hong Kong are expensive, but ...

  China International and domestic banks are spreading the net ever wider in their efforts to bring financial services to China’s increasingly wealthy population.     China has outdone itself. The country’s economy grew by 11.5% in the first three ...

Nicaragua     Guevara: Deal will put an end to lawsuits. When Nicaragua offered commercial creditors a 95.5% haircut on $1.4 billion in commercial debt as part of a workout, the deal appeared to be more of a scalping. Yet ...

Brazil       Mantega: Hiking other taxes will make up for shortfall.       With Brazilian legislators scrapping the country’s financial transactions tax (CPMF) in December, the government says it must now plug a 40 billion real ($22 ...

Palestinian Territories     After decades of war, Palestinians are trying to revive a flagging economy. While media attention is focused on the attempts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, work has been quietly going on ...

India       Tata Motors' new Nano: Launch triggered a sell-off in India's auto sector.       Tata Motors, one of India’s largest domestic truck and passenger car makers, unveiled a car for India’s domestic market priced at ...

Company To Watch: Tata Motors/india Mumbai-based Tata Motors, which is trying to buy Ford Motor’s premier Jaguar and Land Rover brands, unveiled the world’s cheapest car, the $2,500 Nano, at the Auto Expo in New Delhi in January. Dubbed the ...

Russia       Putin: Maintains a tight grip on Russian politics.       After months of uncertainty, the Russian political landscape began to take shape in December. After being anointed by president Vladimir Putin as his successor early ...

CHINA       Hong Kong: Focus of tension with the US. China stoked military tension with the United States by denying entry to a number of US naval vessels looking to dock in Hong Kong. In the most publicized ...

  CHINA       Filling up: China’s consumers may face shortages soon. While the Chinese horoscope attributes such auspicious qualities as intelligence, charisma and compassion to those born in the Year of the Rat, which begins on February 7, ...

DR NEWS       New York-based MSCI Barra, which is majority-owned by Morgan Stanley, plans to introduce a family of benchmark indexes next month covering 19 “frontier market” countries. Institutional investors want to look beyond existing developed and emerging ...

COMPANY TO WATCH: COPA HOLDINGS/PANAMA       Panama, a natural transportation hub with its famous canal, has become an air-transport center for the Americas, thanks to its national flag carrier, Copa Airlines. The fast-growing airline with a young fleet ...

RUSSIA       Putin: Backing his friend Dmitry Medvedev's election bid. As widely anticipated, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party won the country’s parliamentary elections on December 2, with 63% of the vote. In the weeks running up ...

BRAZIL       The good times roll: Brazil's economy provides plenty of reasons to celebrate. Brazil-focused hedge funds continued to outperform other emerging market funds, producing an average 5.11% return in October, for a hefty 29.47% year-to-date (YTD) gain. ...