October 11th, 2011 Meet me at the World MoneyShow Interview with Jeffrey Towson on becoming a Global Value Investor Dear Subscriber I am planning to visit the World MoneyShow London which is taking place on 11-12 November, at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster. Click here for Free registration It would be great to meet up at the show if you are also planning to attend. Please leave me a message via the Feedback form. Interview with Jeffrey Towson on becoming a Global Value Investor If you are interested in investing in emerging markets you may want to read our interview with Jeffrey Towson about his global value investing philosophy. Setting the tone, please read on . . . Until 2009, Jeffrey Towson was Head of Direct Investments Middle East/North Africa and Asia Pacific for Prince Waleed arguably the world's no.2 investor and nicknamed by Time magazine as the "Arabian Warren Buffett". While many investors are advised to have some emerging markets coverage in their stocks and share portfolios via various investment funds and ETF’s, global value investor Jeffrey Towson instead suggest that successfully going global as a value investor requires successfully going direct. He believes “going global” as a value investor means exponentially increasing your potential opportunities. However, experienced investors are finding themselves on rapidly changing and increasingly unfamiliar terrain. Issues like: when sitting in New York or London, can you really go long in China? Isn’t getting accurate information a problem? Isn’t the absence of rule-of-law in many places a problem? What about the fact that there is often no real separation between commercial and government activities? Most investors with global ambitions look at China, India, Brazil, Russia and other places and are rightly cautious. Some investors decide to avoid the perceived risks by avoiding these markets altogether. Or they limit themselves to investing in an indirect way, such as buying European retailers such as Tesco’s with significant exposure to the emerging markets. Going direct - five common “going global problems” Jeffrey Towson formulates five problems aspiring global value investors need to overcome when considering going global, including: Problem 1: Limited access to investments Towson suggest following famous value investor Warren Buffett’s most important lesson that you accumulate wealth by targeting the most mispriced assets and going long. Market inefficiencies are your best targets while time is your best ally. Most of the really mis-priced assets in developing economies are private however. And these tend to be fairly tightly held – often by conglomerates, state-owned-enterprises and owner-managers. Even Buffett was denied in his request to buy 25% of Shenzhen-based BYD (he ultimately got 10%). Getting access and limiting competition at the deal level is a primary problem when going global. Problem 2: Increased uncertainty in the current intrinsic value Most developing economies are characterised by increased uncertainties and instabilities. The markets and companies are developing quickly. Government actors are changing the rules. Information is limited and inaccurate. This all plays out in a greater uncertainty in the calculated intrinsic value. Problem 3: Increased long-term uncertainty, including worries about instability The previous problem becomes even larger over the long-term. Five years in India is a very long time in terms of new regulations. It is hard to invest long-term if the future intrinsic value of your investment can change significantly. Long-term uncertainties (including long-tail risk) are a big problem and focusing on companies with a sustainable competitive advantage (i.e., Buffett’s approach) is usually not enough. Problem 4: The availability of only weak or impractical claims against the target enterprise Board seats and contracts can mean little in many of today’s rising markets. Minority shareholder rights even less. Keeping a strong claim to your asset over the long-term is a critical challenge. Problem 5: Foreigner disadvantages This is the catch-all for the various challenges you face when entering a market as a foreigner. You often have less information. The rules can be written against you. There are language and cultural gaps. You are often far away. And so on. All these, and many more, manifest themselves as disadvantages when competing for deals. According to Towson, if you can overcome these problems, and you have the flexibility in your capital source, you can start to hunt for value investments virtually anywhere. You will find, as Towson has, that most of the world outside the developed markets is wildly mispriced today. Alternatively, you can buy publicly-traded multinationals with extensive emerging market operations - Dividend Income Investor.com current preference. Buying an American or European company, in say retail or natural resources, with operations in China or India takes care of problems 1 and 4. You have access to the deal and you get a clear, legal claim to the asset. This approach also addresses problem 5 (foreigner disadvantages), which can be significant in many places (Russia and China being the most serious). A UK-based investor buying into an AIM-listed Chinese company is at the minimum going to have some information disadvantages relative to local Chinese investors. But a UK-based investor buying a UK multinational has no such disadvantage. Click Here for an extensive interview about Jeffrey Towson global value investing philosopy. Many thanks Until next time. Kind regards Steven Dotsch Editor Early Retirement Investor.com Know someone who'd like to receive Dividend Alerts themselves? Simply forward this link to anyone you think could benefit from our publication: https://www.early-retirement-investor.com/dividend-alerts.html Dividend Alerts is an unregulated product published by EMAR Publishing, publishers of Early Retirement Investor.com EMAR Publishing is not registered as an investment advisor or financial advisor. We do not and will not provide personalised investment or financial advice, or individually advocate the purchase or sale of any security or investment. We publish opinionated information about the stock market and companies that we believe our subscribers may be interested in. There is no guarantee that dividends will be paid. 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