India calling: The best place for investment
Source: ETBB
“The best story is one based on domestic consumption, India is one,” says emerging market evangelist Robert Lloyd George in ET Big Bucks’ exclusive ‘Foreign Hand’ series
Visionaries are people ahead of the majority, often by many years. For example, Jim Rogers, the investment guru who recently lectured in India, started talking about a commodity cycle upturn in the mid-’90s.
The world at large caught up around three years ago. Similarly, Marc Faber had turned bullish on Japan four years ago but global money started flowing into Japan around only a year ago.
Far more low profile than both Rogers and Faber, Robert Lloyd George is a man with a vision and a pretty farsighted one at that.
In 1991, he formed his investment firm Lloyd George Management with a clear focus – emerging markets, and within that China and India. That was much before the global money started chasing emerging market equity.
When the Indian market opened up for foreign institutional investment (FII) investment in 1992, his firm was amongst the first ones to line up. “We were maybe the second or third ones to get FII registration in India,” says Lloyd George.
His firm opened a Mumbai office in 1993. Since then, Mr George has stayed steadfast in his commitment to the Indian market, right through the Harshad Mehta scam and the prolonged bear market thereafter.
At this point, Lloyd George Management has over $1bn in the Indian markets in three separate funds, making it perhaps amongst the top 10 FII money managers within India.
This is a significant portion of the $12.5bn in total assets it has under management. The rest of the money is also in emerging markets, making his firm an emerging market specialist.
ET Big Bucks talked to Mr George about his views on the Indian market, the overall emerging market scenario and global macro indicators.
Click here for the complete interview.
