Prospering In The Next Emerging Markets

Book Review

Marko Dimitrijević, CFA, and chairman of Volta Global knows enough about the emerging and frontier markets. A finance professional that has not only managed money invested in some areas deemed too risky, but he has also traveled to countries where he has or sought to invest in. And within the world’s “emerging” markets, risk tolerance is a must, given how quickly positive environments can turn into ones less appealing.

So after living through multiple global events–debt crises, sudden and in one well-documented instance shocking, central bank action, recessions and near depressions, it is only fitting that Dimitrijević pen a book on how to succeed in such markets: Frontier Investor: How To Prosper In The New Emerging Markets.

In reading this book (his first, published October 25th by Columbia Business School Publishing), I was struck by the case studies. That’s right case studies. Highly detailed with supporting data and evidence with descriptive images to help state the case. He begins with a very basic, but also a very important question: “Why invest in frontier markets?”.  A good one, no doubt, as any reader may want to know why, and why exactly a globally-known fund manager would carve out time to produce a book on a topic too few truly understand. Upon completing this book, the answer is simple– investing in smaller, riskier markets has been part of the author’s life work.

This book presents real-life anecdotes (almost entertaining, if anything) case studies and strategies. Individual and institutional investors alike stand to learn from Dimitrijević, who owns up to his own losses and comes fighting back.

So where are the next great investment opportunities to be found?

Drawing from his 35 years of global investing, Dimitrijević skillfully argues that lucrative opportunities do indeed exist in many so-called risky frontier markets, which today account for seventy-one of the world’s seventy-five fastest-growing economies and 19 percent of the world’s GDP. With so many investors shying away from these markets or even woefully unaware of how to enter and do business in them, real rewards can be earned if a solid strategy is executed properly.

Driven by new access to technology and a near-endless flow of data and information, frontier markets are emerging even faster than their predecessors, Dimitrijević explains, making them what he refers to as “an essential component of a globally diversified portfolio.”