paul-team.jpg
 

Paul Gambles

Recognized as a regional financial expert, Paul is a regular speaker at industry events on market forecasting, financial planning, investing and legal issues for foreigners living or doing business in Asia.  Besides Paul’s blog, Paul previously distributed his ‘almost-daily’ email – “Daily Updates”, where he gave his views on timely issues affecting financial markets, macro economics, micro economics and everything in-between.

Born in South Yorkshire, England, Paul graduated from the University of Warwick with an Honours degree in English and European Studies.  He began his financial career in the early 1980s as a technical inspector at HMIT with Inland Revenue.  Following a successful career change to the Bank of Scotland in 1987, Paul moved to Bangkok in 1994 to help set-up an investment counseling practice, which today is known as MBMG International.

www.mbmg-international.com

  

quote1.JPGquote2.JPGquote3.JPGquote4.JPG

20 August 2010

Gambles - A Lunch with the Godfather ...An offer I couldn't refuse


Yesterday the guru of emerging market  investments , Dr. Mark Mobius of Templeton , chatted to a packed audience at Bangkok’s FCCT. Dr. Mobius had the audience hanging on his every word as he took us with him on his odyssey though emerging markets for the last 4 decades. While his most valuable insights were his unique understanding of  the relative opportunities of developed , emerging and frontier markets and of his time working alongside the great disciplined value investor , Sir John Templeton. I particularly enjoyed the following exchange which arose in response to a question from the floor about the definition of developed, emerging and frontier markets.

 

blog-thailand-mobius-nirmal-2.jpg
                                                                           ST PHOTO: NirmalGhosh

 Mark Mobius – “Back in the 1980s we tended to rely on income per capita as a guideline to how developed a market was. That’s still a good benchmark today. It’s interesting that as some markets have developed, they are moved along the chain and moved away from us. The recent crises have even seen some like Greece come back to us; their Euro membership seemed to make them . More like developed markets but now they seem to be emerging markets again” 
Paul Gambles – “That’s a really interesting point; looking at the relative outlook for both China the USA , is it possible that we could see an emerging market as the world’s largest economy ?
Mark Mobius – Well, Paul, I don’t think that America is in quite such bad shape yet, that its per capita income will fall to emerging economy levels not yet anyway…”
Paul Gambles – Sorry, what I meant was could China overtake the US as the largest economy, while China still has emerging market income per capita ?”
Mark Mobius – Oh yes ,that’s definitely possible . I see what you mean. Yes that could happen.
Paul Gambles – But now you’ve really started me thinking about how far the US spiral can go. I like your answer on that.

For more information about Dr. Mobius’s talk, please don’t hesitate to contact us.