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Bloomberg Radio New York

07:51 min | 9 months ago

"ali reza akbari" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York

"Host of challenges. It's happening ten 30 a.m. in New York, 1130 p.m. if you're watching in Hong Kong. Let's get back to this part of the world because the United Arab Emirates plans to invest $30 billion in hydrogen projects at South Korea. The investments were announced during a state visit by president Yun suk yo that is the first time that the South Korean leader visits in the two established relations all the way back four decades ago Kubernetes has more on this. So Simone, do we have any idea what shape these investments could take? Well, I think the overall theme here is trying to reforge the relationship and already strong relationship between South Korea and the UAE to account for a new future where climate change is very important. And so these investments we understand, at least in the hydrogen space, going to come around production, transmission, and storage. And in an editorial president expressed the depth essentially of these relationships between the UAE and South Korea, as well as other gulf countries, he said that 30% roughly of the construction contracts that Korean companies get from abroad are from the Middle East region and that more than 50% of the country's oil at this point comes from the gulf specifically. There were also some mentions, however, of nuclear power plants of solar energy, those things could be at a target for investments between these two countries as well. But this very important, we're seeing the UAE going to host cop 28 later this year as it looks to expand its investment ties with countries that it hasn't always had the most major business in. So here we see the diplomatic angle. We see the investment angle coming together with these announcements. Over the weekend. And then across the gulf and Iran, the execution of a former government official is having a ripple effect in the UK. What's happening there? And former deputy defense minister in Iran, Ali Reza akbari, the state mizan announcing his execution on Saturday. And this likely to add to animosity between the UK and Iran because we saw a bunch of major rejections condemnations of this coming from the likes of Rishi sunak, the prime minister in the UK, as well as James cleverly the foreign secretary. And the accusation here was that Akbar was a member of MI 6 and working with UK intelligence. The telegraph also adding to this idea of animosity between these two countries reporting that the UK is reconsidering its support for a return to the 2015 nuclear deal. That is the deal that allowed Iranian oil to be sold widely on the open markets. Mostly this deal not being considered very optimistic prospects, but if the UK reconsiders it supports its support, I mean that pretty much could be a nail in the coffin forever getting back to reviving that deal. Absolutely. And then to markets, we've got a new inflation data out from the region from Saudi Arabia, 3.3%. That's the highest in quite some time. Yeah, and we also just in the last hour or so saw new inflation data coming in from a Qatar as well, 5.9%. That pretty much on par with September and that's the highest in a very long time leading the gulf, essentially, and in terms of the strongest inflation numbers, but also looking at new inflation data coming out of Israel 5.8% year on year price growth in the month of December. And that's particularly notable because Israel has much more control over its monetary policy and has embarked on a very aggressive program of rate hikes, but we're not seeing the number come down yet. The real test of this, according to bank of Israel governor, I'm your own likely to come in March. She said inflation is going to remain high through February and then we're going to start to see it falling. You told that to us earlier this month and early January, we're also going to get some GDP data out from Israel today, watch that because bank had probably saying we're not likely to see any growth in the fourth quarter. We'll see what impact the rate hikes are having on that underlying growth. Yeah, the governor is a good friend and I wish more central bankers would take the initiative to address the public beyond just the United States and Europe. So kudos to him, Simone, thank you for that Simone foxman there in Doha. Now let's get to the Egyptian pound, the still world's worst performer this year and measures of short term historical volatility. Well, they're showing that the swings are the most extreme globally. Now, there are signs that the foreign exchange market may be stabilizing, let's examine what cross acid opportunities may exist, joining us now is the head of equity research at telomeres. In moments of extreme dislocations, there are rise, unusually interesting opportunities, usually at incrementally higher risk. How does that apply to Egypt? Well, I think it's a fair question. I mean, if you look at the last year you've seen almost a 50% devaluation, but you're also seeing the establishment of an IMF program, you've seen a lot of commitments bilaterally from the GCC. So we pull back from the worst of the crisis. The question is, where do you look for opportunity in that? If you look at equities, they are a little bit cheap relative to history, but there are a couple of things that concern me. Number one, you look at earnings growth consensus earnings growth this year. It's flat. It's plus 15% for next year. That looks pretty aggressive, given the sort of moves we've seen in the currency and the challenges for growth overall. You look at valuation, equity market offers you about a 4% dividend yield. However, if you look at the bond market in local currency on ten year bonds, you can get 18% in Euro bonds. You can get 11%. So if we had to dip a toe in Egypt, it would be much more on the Bond side rather than equities. The other thing that worries me is we're not out of the Woods as yet. We've still got a negative real interest rate of negative 5%. We've had a big devaluation, which means there's more imported inflation along the way. And we still don't know if we've actually moved to a fully flexible currency regime, or this is just another round of step changes. How contingent are some of your views on Egypt on the country easing their grip in terms of the authorities grip, the military's grip on the economy. This has been a sticking point in the past. It's clearly come up in these IMF discussions. Hopeful are you that they can move along with the well, I think the proof of this is that the IMF has mentioned this in 2015, 2018, and again in this latest program, what are the guarantees that Egypt does this? Well, think of it this way. The more bilateral assistance Egypt gets from the GCC, the less it needs to worry about those sort of things around structural reform. That is not good news for an equity investor who wants a long-term growth and wants it driven by the private sector. Just in terms of building on what you're just talking about, taking it with a bit of a bigger emerging market angle, your research makes clear that you see a two sides to the EM story. We want to sort of the larger EMs and some of the smaller EMs. What are the particular dynamics that could define performance this year? Well, when you think of emerging markets, there are really two categories that are almost two different asset classes. You have the big 7 China, Taiwan, Korea, Brazil, Saudi, South Africa, and those are in combination about 80% of the MSCI