Southern discomfort

12 Oct 2010 By John Foley Follow @johnsfoley

Emerging market tieups are on the rise. But familiar imbalances lurk: India and China are buying, while everyone else sells. Southern economies may be happy to thumb their noses at the North for now, but selling the family silver is a poor way to climb the development ladder.

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Mergers and acquisitions among emerging market buyers and sellers made up 14.5 percent of global deals announced so far in 2010, compared with 11.6 percent in the whole of 2009, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The value of such deals in 2010 so far has hit $262 billion, an 11 percent increase on the whole of 2009, even as the value of global announced mergers and acquisitions fell by that amount.

Chinese oil major Sinopec announced the $7.1 billion purchase of a stake in the Brazilian energy assets of oil producer Repsol, and an intention to develop projects together, on Oct. 1.

The year's biggest crossborder emergingemerging deal was the purchase by India's Bharti Airtel of Zain's African assets for $10.7 billion in June.

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