From Argentina to Zimbabwe, rapid growth and economic transformation are creating a wide array of new business opportunities—for multinational corporations and individual investors alike. But the rise of the developing world is also challenging long-held beliefs that the industrialized nations would call all the shots. In this highly original analysis of developing nations, investment, and global business expansion, Peter Marber identifies the risks and rewards of investing in emerging markets, and reveals new sources of conflict as value systems clash in a game of global economic integration where there will inevitably be financial winners, as well as losers.
Entrepreneurs and investors who want to stay ahead of the pack often look to so-called emerging markets for new opportunities. Investment guru Mark Mobius has previously touted investment options in Mobius on Emerging Markets (1996), and Jeffrey Garten surveyed the business climates of big and emerging markets in The Big Ten (1997). Marber is a founding member and president of Wasserstein Perella Emerging Markets L. P., an asset-management firm devoted primarily to investing in developing regions. He covers much the same ground as Mobius and Garten, but he also identifies and analyzes the underlying trends he says are creating the economic transformation of much of the less-developed world. Marber argues that multinational corporations are "helping the poor get richer and the rich stay rich." He also makes the claim that the world economy is not based on a zero-sum scenario; growth of the Third World will not come at the expense of industrialized economies, though some First World nations might face an "economic squeeze" as a result of "restrictive labor regulations." David Rouse