Get ready for the next wave of globalization. The emergence of the emerging markets is old news, of course: after all, Tom Friedman discovered that the world was flat back in 2005. But even as much of the developed world is struggling with weak consumer demand and stubbornly high levels of unemployment, the emerging market countries are writing a new chapter in the story of the global economy.
We are accustomed to thinking of our economic relationship with the countries Fareed Zakaria describes as “the rest” as a two-way exchange between west and east or north and south: western companies setting up call centers in India or manufacturing their goods in China, for instance; and, more recently, savings-rich emerging market economies, especially China, investing in US treasuries, or Russian oligarchs buying London mansions.
That was Globalisation 1.0. In the next stage, some of the biggest deals and some of the most important capital flows will be between emerging markets, with no need to stop-over at Heathrow or JFK. Forget the last decade’s race-to-the-bottom rivalry between Wall Street and the City of London to be the world’s financial capital; the new motto of the moneymen, as one Manhattan banker put it to me this week, is “Mumbai, Dubai, Shanghai or goodbye.”
One place you can watch Globalisation 2.0 gathering pace is on the 49th floor of the ‘C’ tower in the high-tech high-rise complex the locals call Moskva City, on the banks of the Moskva river, half a mile downstream from Russia’s White House, where Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is currently installed. The fancy modern furniture (the “Ziricote veneer,” a sign informs visitors, is “sourced in Chile”) and contemporary art are standard New York hedge fund decor. But Stephen Jennings, the 50 year-old New Zealander who receives visitors here, is betting on a world that by-passes the west altogether.
Jennings is a founder and CEO of the Renaissance Group, a Moscow-based financial company with ambitions to be the premier investment bank for intra-emerging market capital flows. As Jennings put it, he wants Renaissance “to provide the plumbing”.
Last year, Jennings went home to Wellington to deliver the annual Trotter lecture, a stage he used to lay out his vision of the rise of indigenous emerging market players. “Multinationals’ advantages in terms of know-how and capital have been neutralized by their inability or reluctance to grow explosively in complex, foreign environments,” he argued. “In many emerging markets and in an increasing number of industries, the market leaders have local roots. The largest metals group in the world is Indian. The largest aluminum group in the world is Russian … The fastest-growing and largest banks in China, Russia and Nigeria are all domestic.”
Jennings knows that emerging markets are “highly idiosyncratic.” But, he told me, some of the savviest emerging market champions seem to be discovering they have more in common with each other than with their erstwhile tutors in the west: “they have analogous business models and states of development … they are all culturally attuned to these fast-growing markets.”
One of the best examples is eight floors above Jennings’ office: DST, or Digital Sky Technologies, the Moscow-based internet investor which made a global splash with a landmark deal with Facebook. Earlier this year, DST formed a three-way partnership with Naspers, the South African media company, and Tencent, the Chinese internet firm. Together the three hope to dominate the emerging market internet space. Another seminal intra-emerging market deal was the acquisition by Bharti, the Indian telecom giant, of most of the African properties of Kuwait-based Zain.
A high-tech executive who lives in California and has close ties to Bharti told me the Indian firm has a competitive advantage over western rivals in what he believes will be the explosively growing African market: “They know how to provide mobile phones so much more cheaply than we do. In a place like Africa, how can western firms compete?”
It would be wrong, of course, to count the west out. Multinational behemoths like GE, Coca Cola and HSBC have been quick to understand the opportunity emerging markets represent and agile in adapting to local conditions. The reliability and the reputation of these global brands can make them appealing partners for even the most aggressive emerging market entrepreneurs. And when it comes to paradigm-shifting innovation, western companies like Apple and Facebook are still setting the international agenda.
In fact, it may be western politicians rather than western CEOs who will be blindsided by this coming wave of globalization. Lackluster economic growth and persistent unemployment are fueling protectionist sentiment in many developed countries, especially the US. At a time when emerging market countries and companies are getting better and better at doing business with one another, that impulse may not only be self-destructive. Even worse, it could be futile.
Why does no one seem to acknowledge that inflation is not only inevitable, it will sooner or later destroy the global economy. The reason for this is that profit is mathematically impossible without continual economic growth and economic growth in turn is mathematically impossible.
It is quite simple, if you think of it like this:
All of the employers in the world, including the self employed, government departments etc pay their employees, their suppliers, those who provide various services and themselves X billion dollars. After a given time, assuming that a percentage of these employers are businesses and expect to make profit, they need revenue of X Billion plus whatever return they expect (lets say 10%). Where does the 10% come from? There is no possible source for it.
When economies were smaller national affairs, it was possible to bring revenue from another country. Today with a global economy, there is simply nowhere left to expand to. The only solutions are credit and printing money. But eventually as we are all now only too aware, credit has to be repaid. We have no where left to go now except runaway inflation.