How have those countries changed over your career?
"What’s happened to emerging markets over the last couple of decades is they’ve kind of wised up and realized if they want to attract capital, they better have better trading practices, shareholder rights have to mean something and I would say in a lot of emerging countries now, the quality of the investment climate is as good as a lot of the developed countries."

Where do frontier markets fit into your portfolio?
"We don’t play with them. If they meet the minimal standards, we put it in emerging markets. Frontier markets, by and large, are on the other side of the line from our standards. It doesn’t mean they’re inherently bad. It’s just a different kind of investing and a different level of risk."

Does that mean you’re looking at Argentina and Saudi?
"Yeah. We look for reasons to include them, not for reasons to exclude them.” With a long history of exchange controls, which were only abolished when President Mauricio Macri came to power, “we don’t jump in right away. We wait to make sure they’re not going back on.”

Are you getting in on the crypto craze?
"I don’t understand crytpocurrencies. One of the things you’d like to have in a currency is a stable source of value. These cryptocurrencies are fluctuating all over the place. I don’t know why you’d call that money. You can call anything money I guess. I can’t imagine dealing in cryptocurrencies. The usefulness might be the legal usefulness in interbank settlements. But we’re not tempted to be involved with them at this stage."

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.

First « 1 2 » Next