bargain-hunting opportunities in Vietnam and Romania due to good growth
prospects, with a large potential in their equity markets.
Mobius, a prominent emerging markets fund manager who oversees about 40
billion USD in assets, said he does not see an asset bubble appearing
in Asian shares, but investors should watch out for volatility and
instability in emerging economies.
The fund manager
oversees the Romanian government's compensation fund – Fondul
Proprietatea – with a size of 4 billion euro (5.13 billion USD) in
assets, or about 20 percent of the market capitalisation of Romania
's stock market.
"We'll be investing probably most heavily
in raw materials, oil, gas as well as electric power, because of big
demand for electric power in the country," Mobius, executive chairman of
Templeton Emerging Markets Group, told a news conference.
The Romanian fund is diversified, with the largest holdings in oil
companies. The fund also invests in gas and gas transmission companies
and property firms, he said.
Templeton is also looking to invest steadily in Vietnam , Mobius said.
" Vietnam 's stock market is now down from the peak in '07 and there
is a good opportunity now because of low prices," he said.
Mobius said Vietnam 's population is increasing by 1 percent a year
and the country's stock market is growing at a good pace.
Vietnam has a weighting of 7 percent in the Templeton Frontier
Markets Fund, with total assets under management of 442.45 million USD
as of July 31.
The fund sharply outperformed the benchmark
over the past year, producing a return of 21.8 percent against the
benchmark of 4.8 percent.
"We've been investing in a
pretty wide variety of companies (in Vietnam ). Liquidity is very
difficult and small, so it takes patience," Mobius said.
He said he has been looking at property and harbour firms.
The fund manger was in Vietnam last week to also look at furniture companies.
Templeton does not see an asset bubble occurring in Asian shares, but sees it as hard to avoid volatility in emerging markets.
Investors must be ready for volatility and must be patient, Mobius said.
"We try to encourage people to buy when things look bad when markets
are down, because as you can see the recoveries in these bear markets
can be very rapid," he said./.
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