Participants of the Russia Business and Investment Summit at the closing bell. Source:Valerie Caviness
Russia’s popularity as an investment destination has suffered from its reputation as a country with a lack of law enforcement, a prevalence of corruption, and a government that likes to have a strong hand in the business sector. But participants in the Russia Business and Investment Summit, which took place at the New York Stock Exchange at the end of October, hoped to rehabilitate the country’s image by separating rumor from reality.
“You can always use the bad example as
a way to explain everything. Bad things happen here [in Russia] and in other countries; it does not mean
that you cannot have success,” said Laura Brank, a lawyer with Dechert LLP, who
has been working in Moscow
for 16 years.
Brank said that as an investment destination, Russia should be compared to other
emerging markets rather than developed Western economies.
“Big I.T. companies have reported greater success in combating counterfeiting
in Russia than in other
emerging markets such as China,”
said Brank, speaking from the experience of one of her clients. “Investors
should understand that Russia
is a different legal environment. To be successful it takes time.”
" Over the last couple of years, there has been a great pick-up in the number of international issuers using the ruble bond market. We expect to see more [of them] coming.”
John T. Connor, portfolio manager with the Third Millenium Russian Fund, said
that he had never had a corruption problem in Russia, although he suggested that
small start-ups were probably more likely than big foreign companies to face
that problem.
“I lived and worked in India,
and the idea that Russia is
more corrupt than India
is a joke,” Conner said. “Sure, there is corruption in Russia, no question about it. But
we even had it in New Jersey,”
he added, speaking about his home state.
More and more firms are either having the experience that Brank and Connor
describe, or deciding the potential of the market far outweighs the risk.
“Clearly the market has an appetite for the client size that Russia offers,” said Graham Marshall, head of
the Russia
and C.I.S. practice at BNYMellon. “There have been two large I.P.O.s from the
entire European area, Rosneft and VTB, most recently.”
" I lived and worked in India, and the idea that Russia is more corrupt than India is a joke. Sure there is corruption, no question about it. But we even had it in New Jersey."
Said Ross Goodhart, principal at Siguler Guff & Company, which invests in Russia,
“We don’t invest in government-regulated industries. There is more than enough
to invest in Russia.
The perception is that government is very invasive, but it gets involved in
industries that are critical to state stability.”
Goodhart described Russia’s
competitiveness for investment compared with other emerging economies as
“high-margin businesses with a limited amount of capital targeting those
companies.” He said that the Russian bond market is growing at rates similar to
that of other emerging markets, and his view is backed by Standard & Poors,
which rates Russia’s local
currency bonds BBB, the same as Brazil
and better than India,
which has a BBB- rating. Despite this, according to Goodhart, in Russia,
investors can enter the market more cheaply.
" There are some really world-class companies out there. It’s our responsibility to get the word out. Right now the only people interested are emerging-market funds.”
Other investment firms see opportunities in the growing Russian consumer
market. Michael O’Flynn, managing director at UFG Asset Management, said that
there is “a favorable environment for private equity in particular,” adding
that his company likes to invest in everything that is connected with Russian
consumer.
“There is a very vibrant consumer market in Russia,”
said Joshua Tulgan, head of investor relations at MTS, Russia’s largest mobile network
operator. Low consumer debt levels and a favorable regulatory environment for
telecoms have made Russia
a promising market, Tulgan said. MTS, which is listed on the New York Stock
Exchange, earned more than $11 billion in revenues last year.
Boris Lipkin, with California’s Vantage Point
Capital, said that although his firm is not investing in Russia yet, they are looking into
it, which is one of the reasons he attended the summit.
Louiza Ferrara, vice president of Philippe Investment Management, headquartered in Paris, said that her company was interested in the summit because it gave them the opportunity to learn more about Russia, especially the energy and mining industries. “We want to know how these companies work with their clients, what are the new tendencies,” she said.
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