Emerging Markets

The luxury fashion house Kenzo is to open a standalone store on Alibaba Group’s Tmall Luxury Pavilion, a dedicated platform for luxury and premium brands. This makes Kenzo the first LVMH-owned fashion label to open a flagship store on Tmall even though the luxury group has already introduced a growing range of its beauty, accessories and wine subsidiaries on Tmall and the Pavilion, including Guerlain, Givenchy, Fresh, Benefit, Rimowa, Tag Heuer, Zenith and Moët Hennessy to engage online consumers.

One of the brokers we work with in Asia, CLSA, puts out an annual Feng Shui Guide as an alternative look at what’s in store for the new year to help luck flow in your direction. That also includes a forecast for what will happen to financial markets in the year ahead.

We recently came across data from the US National Science Board, highlighting what is called Science & Engineering Indicators 2020. It deals with the science & engineering articles that have been published around the world. Its latest data are for 2018 and these are the main takeaways...

Often overlooked in favour or its better-known neighbours, landlocked Laos remains one of Southeast Asia’s most enchanting destinations. Caught in the middle of the two Indochina wars and long isolated from the rest of the world, the country retains a slow, rustic charm, and its people -incredibly laidback and friendly- are undoubtedly one of the highlights of any visit. I was recently traveling throughout Laos and I can only recommend it. From Luang Prabang to the far north, its capital Vientiane and finally the far south, Laos is still somewhat different from most other Asian countries.

After having written about Santa Claus and the origins of the Finish gaming industry in our previous blog post, we will now zoom into the Finnish gaming industry a bit more.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is another great example of the type of companies we are looking for in our emerging markets universe. This time, we will be highlighting a company that has long ago already evolved from a “Global Challenger” into a “Global Leader”. TSMC in fact pioneered the dedicated foundry industry and today still has the largest market share worldwide by far.

Anta Sports is a great example of the type of Global Challengers we are looking for. The Anta brand was established in 1991. The company’s strategy is to be a competitive global player in terms of sportswear and apparel. They are already known as ‘China’s Nike’. Thanks to the acquisition of Amer Sports, a Finish sportswear conglomerate having brands such as Wilson, Salomon, Arc'Teryx, PeakPerformance, Atomic, they are now also expanding globally.