DOGE tech engineers saving America. Ian Bremmer says, engineers?, meh.
Ian is one of The Experts™.
Source: The Economist removepaywall.com
Some of the biggest disagreements are over Russia. “It's very risky, but it is also very profitable, especially if the Kremlin likes you,” says another of the billionaire investors in BP-TNK. “They like the Germans, are afraid of the Chinese, don't like the Americans and British, don't mind the French.” Foreigners should probably avoid industries that the Kremlin deems strategic, but which are they? Oil and mining, certainly, though that is also where the biggest opportunities lie. Technology, commercial aviation, telecoms, chemicals and agriculture are all “grey areas”, says Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group.
What about property? Hank Greenberg, the former boss of AIG, is investing in commercial property in Russia because, he says, it is “not a strategic industry” for the government. But Gary Garrabrant, chief executive of Equity International, who has been investing in emerging markets since the mid-1990s with Sam Zell, a property billionaire, is avoiding Russia “because we can't get our arms around the risk”. Nor is he particularly impressed with India, where there is a “culture of institutionalised corruption around obtaining land and permits for development”. As for China, “there is a huge opportunity in urbanisation, but stay diverse, below the government's radar. Don't be a target.”
The growing importance of emerging markets has provided plenty of work for advisers on political risk from Cambridge Energy Research Associates to Oxford Analytica. “The extractive industries, firms like Shell, got the message about political risk 30 years ago, but most of the Fortune 100 weren't thinking this way until recently,” says Mr Bremmer. “Corporates in the tech area are among the worst, perhaps because their management is suffused with engineers.” |
