“Global Investing”

A Panel with Kamran Elahian, Founder, Global Catalyst Partners; Gary Rieschel, Founding Partner, Qiming Ventures, Shanghai; Ricardo Salinas, Founder and Chairman, Grupo Salinas; and Christie Simons, Partner, Chinese Services Group, Deloitte & Touche LLP; hosted by Russ Daggatt, Founding General Partner, Denny Hill Capital

RS: If you look at the lont-term trend, the impact is clear. Mexican banking system wasn’t hurt by the last bubble. There are opportunities for individual investors to break into Mexican investing, but they should be ready to move around.

GR: If you want to make a lot of money now, you should go to Africa, India. If you have a lot of guts, you go the infrastructure route. If you want to be on the safer side, ID what services infrastructure enables. If you imagine China today, the telecom boom, the internet, the highways, railways are all happening now. Individually, commodities stocks and internet stocks are all 4-5X up. In terms on individual investors, playing the Chinese market, you can’t. Truly domestic chinese companies, the financials are . . . emerging. The safest play are multi-nationals.

China is building out Indonesian, African infrastructure. Someone is paying for both mining operations and goods coming out the other end, those are safe places to invest.

KE: High technology investment, global VC fund has investments all over the year. Mobility has been growing all over the world. Invest in tech that brings people together and use it to create world peace and harmony. Within US, semiconductor industry has completely disappeared. That has all gone to China. Most investments of his in China have been infrastructure related, although a few tech investments have been good. Israel is a trove of new technologies, but there’s a real problem with VC. Japan has been hit very hard.

CS: On China: advising infrastructure and clean tech– wind, solar, biofuels, etc. Will continue to build out infrastructure and opportunities in education will pop up. Challenges –emerging financials, dealing with a teenager- they’ve been able to leapfrog all the things the US did as an emerging country. China needs to learn norms, ie. IP. Chinese culture of giving gifts creates a bit of cultural issue.

RS: American view of business. World is not what one would like it to be. It’s almost quaint.

GR: Innovation coming from the US is going to end much faster and more suddenly than you’d think. Innovation requires need. You’re not going to see the innovation until there are 1000 new ones at once.

RS: Investing in Guatemala, Peru, Colombia (exploding), Argentina: lots of consumption, but iffy regulatory environment; Mexico is same as US. Have millions of entrepreneurs, because there’s so much need.

Reporting corporations are having trouble with regulations.

KE: In the US when you do the right thing you get ahead. In other countries that’s not the case.