{"id":20730,"date":"2011-02-21T08:23:43","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T13:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/?p=20730"},"modified":"2011-02-21T08:38:26","modified_gmt":"2011-02-21T13:38:26","slug":"hedge-funds-in-the-spotlight-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/02\/2011\/hedge-funds-in-the-spotlight-russia.html","title":{"rendered":"Hedge Funds In the Spotlight: Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York (HedgeCo.net) -Peter Elam H\u00e5kansson, Head of Portfolio Management Team and Marcus Svedberg, Chief Economist of East Capital are positive in their outlook for Russia this year, citing reforms, privatisation and a sharp change in international investor perceptions as key reasons.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSince the financial crisis, Russia has seen a strong flow of assets in favour of other emerging markets, with the international investment community acknowledging Russia\u2019s commitment to reforms and privatisations which are all positive steps in the right direction,\u201d Peter said, speaking in a webcast to investors.<\/p>\n

Inflation<\/strong>
\nAsked whether inflation is a problem, Marcus said, \u201cRussia is used to dealing with high inflation with double digit figures throughout almost all periods of the past 10 years, and today\u2019s figures are comparatively low.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t want to sound complacent about the inflation issue; it is certainly worth paying attention to. Inflation should rise above 10% in the near future, then unless Russia experiences a terrible drought, it should come down later this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Privatisations- IPOs<\/strong>
\nCommenting on the privatisations of Russian companies, Peter said, \u201cThe more listings that come to the market the better. We welcome IPOs and believe it\u2019s a very positive trend. The recent listing of Russian Bank VTB was a good example of a strong investment theme playing the Russian economy in a positive way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe merger of RTS and Micex going forward will bring uniformity to the Russian stock market, where you will no longer see two exchanges competing against each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sector Themes in Portfolio<\/strong>
\nOne of the key themes is Russia\u2019s rising middle class and their increased appetite to spend and obtain a mortgage in a low interest rate environment. As a result, East Capital sees real estate development, construction and materials sectors as key themes likely to benefit from these changing patterns and low interest rates.<\/p>\n

Election 2012<\/strong>
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t believe the elections next March will result in change. It will be the same people running the country, there may be some job rotations, but it won\u2019t impact too much. The good news is that stability will be maintained,\u201d said Marcus.<\/p>\n

Closing the Discount<\/strong>
\nPeter concluded by saying, \u201cRussia has always traded at a discount to its emerging market peers. It has to do with misconceptions and misunderstandings of what is happening in Russia. No market is a risk free market, and that is true for Russia. However we believe that too much risk has been allocated to Russia and consequently people\u2019s investment decisions. The real risk is lower than perceived risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we continued to see more stability combined with more economic reforms, we should gradually see a closing of the discount. It may take around three years, but the trend is definitely there.\u201d\u00a0(View on demand<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Editing by Alex Akesson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York (HedgeCo.net) -Peter Elam H\u00e5kansson, Head of Portfolio Management Team and Marcus Svedberg, Chief Economist of East Capital are positive in their outlook for Russia this year, citing reforms, privatisation and a sharp change in international investor perceptions as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16005,919,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-developing-stories","category-hedge-fund-research","category-hedgeco-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20730"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20732,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20730\/revisions\/20732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}