Think Globally, Deal Locally

Extracted 29SEP2011 from http://dealbook.nytimes.com/category/special-topics/special-section-fall-2011/

As economic engines stall in the United States and Western Europe, private equity firms, corporate suitors and investment bankers are increasingly venturing overseas, touching down in far-flung locales like Uganda, Malaysia and Chile.

While mergers and acquisitions in such markets are still small compared to those in developed countries, international deal-making is on the rise. The 20 most active countries in the emerging and frontier markets — nations found in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa — have notched nearly $377 billion of deals this year, up roughly 3 percent from the same period in 2010, according to Thomson Reuters...

But forging deals in developing regions comes with a unique set of uncertainties, including political, economic and regulatory risks...

“There is this image of a frontier, and you think of someone getting hungry in Africa,” said Marko Dimitrijevic, founder of Everest Capital, a hedge fund investing abroad. “The reality is some of the fastest-growing economies in the world are in the frontier area.”