Emerging markets - corruption is just the start
Jinfo Blog

By Tim Buckley Owen

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“Look before you leap” is the advice offered by a new Deloitte/Forbes Insight report on managing risk in global investments.  Compliance issues in emerging markets are a particular concern – so it’s hardly surprising that business information suppliers are continuing to jump onto these two bandwagons.

China ranks highest on the list of countries causing such concerns, with South America next, according to the free survey of over 500 respondents from companies in the United States, Canada and Mexico, carried out by Forbes Insights for Deloitte Financial Advisory Services (registration required).  Corruption and money laundering are a particular focus – but the due diligence issues run far wider than this.

So Bureau Van Dijk seized the occasion of the Chinese New Year recently to launch China Connect, a new module in BvD’s Zephyr mergers & acquisitions database developed in collaboration with M&A specialist BCMS International.  Offering “hard to find” intelligence on M&A activity involving smaller Chinese companies, China Connect provides information on potential acquisition targets in private companies and transactional history on completed deals – plus regular economic intelligence and the option of managed introductions to deal parties.

Elsewhere, the Financial Times has just announced the launch of Brazil Confidential, a new premium digital research service closely following the launch just a month earlier of the broader emerging markets service FT Tilt.  The new service will report on investment opportunities in the lesser known regions of the country, “giving readers insight into the complicated world of the Brazilian capital market”.

Emerging markets also feature in Dodd-Frank Watch, a new service launched recently by Thomson Reuters Governance, Risk & Compliance.  Providing news and analysis on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, one of its early features focuses on the growing pressure being put on Asian regulators by their US and United Kingdom counterparts to adopt a “zero tolerance” approach to financial crime.

In view of all this, it’s no surprise that Incisive Media has chosen Hong Kong as the location for what looks like a carbon copy of the Online Information event that takes in London each December.  Running on March 23 and 24, Online Information Asia-Pacific will include a trade exhibition, a conference, free seminars – and a one-day Business Information Forum in partnership with BIIA, looking at the implications of trade credit and finance and the challenges posed by “asymmetries” in information in developing markets.

So the runes are clear; emphasis on both compliance and emerging markets is set to grow, and the interconnections between the two can only become more complex over time.  But that’s just the start; due diligence on emerging economies is likely to throw up a whole host of other issues – data protection for one.

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