M. Nicolas Firzli, the Hon. Nick Sherry & Christopher Smith, co-chaired the G7 Retirement Investment Roundtable (GRiR) and European ESG & Impact Summit (EES), 7–10 December 2023, held in the EU Capital at the start of the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council (1S_24).

In this exclusive interview with Mohd. Fathy on Asharq News with Bloomberg, Western Asia’s leading financial news network, Nicolas Firzli shares some of the recent discussions he had in Brussels with influential asset owners, financial regulators and policy thinkers from France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Italy, the UK & Ireland + Australia.

“The Fed will probably hold its current rates steady […] indicating some cuts are to be expected in [early] 2024” … Jerome Powell and his colleagues can afford to do so – unlike some of their European peers “facing higher inflationary pressure for longer” … RE: emerging markets & developing economies (EMDEs) ex-China, I find myself in agreement with the results of a recent Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) survey published 9 December 2023: an increasing number of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), central banks and public pensions seem to “favor India over China” …

Our own research predicted that trend as early as January 2022 (Firzli & Sherry) … But one has to remain cautious here: in spite of the current headwinds for Beijing (“Cold War 2”, “Deglobalization”, “Bidenomics”), in many industrial sectors, China is still far ahead of India, and Chinese consumers [will] remain [for the next 7 to 10 years] “richer, more urbanized, and more open to [high-margin] foreign consumer brands than their Indian peers”, a fact sophisticated asset owners can’t ignore for long.

https://now.asharq.com/clip/الفرزلي-الاستثمار-في-أسهم-الأسواق-الناشئة-سيستمر-خلال-2024