Emerging Markets

There has been a series of regulatory changes in China since 2019, mainly taking place in new economy sectors, first with gaming, then fintech, and now private education. On July 23, Beijing announced new rules barring for-profit tutoring in core school subjects to ease financial pressure on families. These regulatory measures have had a major impact on the equity market especially for the affected industries, though the short-term macro impact has remained limited.

Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year, begins celebrations on the eve starting from February 11^th, 2021 and lasts until February 26^th, 2021. According to the Chinese zodiac, 2021 is a Metal Ox year. The most iconic sculpture of a Metal Ox is the Charging Bull on Wall Street, a bronze sculpture right in Manhattan’s Financial District. The Ox occupies the second position in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac and the reason for its placing can be found in a well-known story, The Great Race Story of the Chinese Zodiac.

Founded in 1947, Koo In-Hwoi (founder of LG Corp) established Lucky Chemical Industrial Corp, and launched "Lucky Cream," the very first cosmetics product in Korea. In 1954, the company also launched Korea's first toothpaste brand, ‘Lucky Toothpaste’. In February 1995, the company changed its name to LG Chemical Ltd. In April 2001, LG Household & Health Care (LG H&H) spun off from LG Chemical, and was listed on the Korean Stock Exchange. Since then, it has grown to be Korean’s largest household goods and cosmetics company with currently a market capitalization of $19 billion.

Chinese regulators decided to launch a new Nasdaq-style Shanghai’s Star Board on 13 June 2019. Their vision is to make the Star Board a serious competitor to the Nasdaq - an attractive financing option for dynamic companies while offering investment opportunities. It wants to create a fundraising platform for promising technology firms in key fields such as chip making, artificial intelligence and biotechnology.

Alibaba-affiliated fintech giant Ant Group has announced its long-awaited public offering with a dual listing on the new Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Star Board (or the Science and Technology Innovation Board, which is being dubbed “China’s Nasdaq”) and also on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

LG Chem is the leading South Korean vertically integrated chemicals company that has globally competitive products, including premium grade ABS, specialty polymers, polarisers and energy storage and electric vehicle (EV) battery cells. It holds the largest market share in the global ABS market and is leading the market as a global EV leader on its superior technology. LG Chem is a way to play the increasing penetration of EV and is also poised to benefit from the EU’s Green Energy Deal.

SK Hynix (Hynix) is a South Korea-based company mainly active in the production and sales of semiconductor memories. Its major products include dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), NAND flashes, as well as multi-chip packages (MCP), among others. Since piloting production of South Korea’s first 16kb static random-access memory (SRAM) in 1984, SK Hynix is now the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker (after Samsung Electronics) and the world’s fifth-largest semiconductor company. SK Hynix has consistently led the industry with smaller, faster and lower power semiconductors, mostly focused on DRAM.

Julius Baer recently published its first “Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report” that looks at the trends behind consumption patterns. Driven by a booming number of wealthy residents who are reshaping the global high-end market, Asia is now home to the three most expensive cities in the world. But as consumers worldwide begin to put sustainability in focus, the high-end market is set to undergo further transformation in the coming years.

At the end of 2018, Jair Bolsonaro was elected as the new president of Brazil. The election of Bolsonaro, sometimes called the “Trump of Brazil”, was seen as a shift to the far right and in fact one of the most radical political changes in decades. He certainly is a very controversial figure who exalted the country’s military dictatorship, advocated torture and threatened to destroy, jail or drive his political opponents into exile. Still, he managed to win the presidential elections by tapping into a deep well of resentment at the status quo in Brazil: a country whiplashed by rising crime and two years of political and economic turmoil. His promise was that he would change all of that and bring much needed change.

Shenzhou International Group is one of the few large-scale and vertically integrated fabric/garment suppliers in Asia, which has a concentration of high-quality customers such as Nike, Uniqlo, Adidas and Puma.