LONDON (Reuters) – Low correlations between the world’s most esoteric stock markets are enabling many investors in frontier market indices to escape, or at least absorb, the turmoil in the Middle East relatively unscathed.

International debt securities in these countries are proving more prone to contagion, but equity investors are reaping some of the diversification benefits that frontiers promise.

LONDON (Reuters) – Low correlations between the world’s most esoteric stock markets are enabling many investors in frontier market indices to escape, or at least absorb, the turmoil in the Middle East relatively unscathed.

International debt securities in these countries are proving more prone to contagion, but equity investors are reaping some of the diversification benefits that frontiers promise.

LONDON (Reuters) – “It’s raining now,” politicians told then-Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala seven years ago, when she began to develop ways to save the country’s oil wealth for a rainy day.

Okonjo-Iweala’s brainchild Excess Crude Account began its short life in 2004, growing to as much as $20 billion (£12.4 billion) in 2007. The ECA then dwindled to less than $1 billion, a victim of political wrangling between central and local government.

LONDON, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Foreign direct investment in
Pakistan could return to a positive trend this year, but
militancy is a deterrent to investors, the country’s investment
minister said on Thursday.

Floods last year caused nearly $10 billion in damages to
Pakistan, and the country’s costly war against Islamist
insurgents has also weighed on its efforts to attract foreign
investment.

LONDON (Reuters) – Cairo financial markets, reopening from a prolonged closure and a steep selloff, cannot look forward to much support from overseas portfolio managers who want more clarity on Egypt’s economic and corporate outlook before venturing back to the country’s newly-cheap securities.

Seven out of ten fund managers interviewed by Reuters for this article said they will not buy Egyptian securities just yet despite steep falls that have brought stock valuations to among the most attractive levels in the emerging market asset class.

LONDON (Reuters) – Cairo financial markets, reopening from a prolonged closure and a steep selloff, cannot look forward to much support from overseas portfolio managers who want more clarity on Egypt’s economic and corporate outlook before venturing back to the country’s newly-cheap securities.

Seven out of ten fund managers interviewed by Reuters for this article said they will not buy Egyptian securities just yet despite steep falls that have brought stock valuations to among the most attractive levels in the emerging market asset class.

LONDON (Reuters) – Cairo financial markets, reopening from a prolonged closure and a steep selloff, cannot look forward to much support from overseas portfolio managers who want more clarity on Egypt’s economic and corporate outlook before venturing back to the country’s newly-cheap securities.

Seven out of ten fund managers interviewed by Reuters for this article said they will not buy Egyptian securities just yet despite steep falls that have brought stock valuations to among the most attractive levels in the emerging market asset class.

LONDON (Reuters) – Mass protests in Egypt, one of the darlings of African and Middle Eastern investors, sharply increase the risks that international investors will withdraw funds from some other economies in the region.

Fund managers were relatively sanguine about the upheaval in Tunisia which drove President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee earlier this month, as Tunisia is a frontier market which doesn’t feature on many portfolio managers’ radar screens.

LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – The European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development revised up its emerging Europe
2011 growth forecast to 4.2 percent on Monday, but said downside
risks to the region had increased.

The bank forecast 4.1 percent growth for 2011 in October.

The EBRD kept its estimates for 2010 growth unchanged at 4.2
percent.

“Stronger than anticipated growth in the core euro zone,
fiscal and monetary stimuli in the U.S., and rising commodity
prices are likely to boost growth across the region in an
increasingly private sector-led recovery,” the development bank
said in a statement.

LONDON, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Neither side in the power
struggle gripping Ivory Coast has contacted bond holders over
payment of a delayed coupon, 10 days before a grace period runs
out, a senior debt negotiator said on Thursday.

Alassane Ouattara was proclaimed winner of a Nov. 28 poll by
the electoral commission and is internationally recognized as
president-elect, but incumbent Laurent Gbagbo has refused to go,
alleging vote-rigging by the opposition.