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Apr 01 2014

Letter from Baku: the City of Winds in the Land of Fire

There’s something slightly unreal about arriving in Baku. The trip from the airport sets the scene. For starters, there’s the taxi fleet – London-style cabs painted regal purple, by decree of the First Lady. Faux medieval crenellations line the velvet-smooth airport highway; closer to town they yield to the fluid lines and gleaming white tiles of what looks like an Azerbaijani space centre but is, in fact, the Heydar Aliev Centre, a cultural complex designed by celebrity architect Zaha Hadid.

Surveying it all from posters and statues across the land is the silent-movie star visage of Aliev himself, the former President and founder of the modern state. This is Alice in Wonderland meets Ali Baba. [Read more…]

Written by AnnaPurna Consulting · Categorized: Country analysis

Feb 20 2014

Big Macs and Banh Mi

Dawn Smith, Managing Director, South-east Asia, AnnaPurna Consulting

I walked past Paul, the French bakery, in Jakarta this past week and noted that at 5pm, it was packed to the gills with well-off Indonesians enjoying themselves. Granted, this was arguably Jakarta’s most upscale mall (a property owned by a notorious businessman), but it is emblematic of how Southeast Asia’s emerging economies are proving fertile ground for Western consumer brands.  [Read more…]

Written by AnnaPurna Consulting · Categorized: Uncategorized

Feb 05 2014

BRICs, MINTs and the Winter Olympics

Dissecting risk as a career brings with it certain professional pitfalls. One of them is to think that the world is constantly on the verge of calamitous change. This temptation must be held strongly in check. There are only so many times you can say the sky is falling. Most of the time, it’s not.  [Read more…]

Written by AnnaPurna Consulting · Categorized: Political risk analysis, Uncategorized

Nov 29 2013

Super-hero politics – Britain’s search for a world role continues.

Earlier this week, I watched American television news break the story of the Iranian nuclear agreement. A few hours and a transatlantic flight later and I watched the same story reported in the British media. I had to stop and check that I was watching the same events. In the United States, Secretary of State John Kerry was alone in bestriding the globe bringing the possibility of peace in the Middle East a step nearer; only his lack of a mask and cape denying him full superhero status.  [Read more…]

Written by AnnaPurna Consulting · Categorized: Uncategorized

Oct 22 2013

No Man is an Island.

In an idle moment this morning, I was browsing the sale particulars for the Isle of Wiay, a deserted island in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. Pretty soon I was making mental plans of how I would restore the dilapidated croft, build a jetty and where I would position the wind turbine to avoid spoiling the extraordinary contours of the landscape.

This is what happens after a week in Shanghai. It is not just the scale of Shanghai that is overwhelming; it is the knowledge that this city is now just one of many mega-cities that have sprung up right across China. Just thinking about how this densely populated corner of this massive city is replicated across this vast land is exhausting and makes a depopulated island perched in the Atlantic on the edge of the European land mass seem quite alluring.

Each time I come here I am staggered by the sheer enormity of what it must take to run this country particularly because the stakes are so high. Keeping the Chinese economy growing, making major structural adjustments and meeting the material aspirations of the population is not just a domestic political imperative for the Chinese Communist Party. We all now depend on Chinese success given the extent to which China has become such an integrated and vital component of the global economy. [Read more…]

Written by AnnaPurna Consulting · Categorized: Uncategorized

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