Steve Blitz Morning Notes

This article from today's FT points up, underscores, and otherwise supports my contention that it is well past the time to end U.S. economic policy based on importing the world's savings to leverage domestic spending and thus allow U.S. consumers to be the buyer of last resort for the world's overproduction. It has been to the U.S. advantage, political and economic, for developing countries to grow and prosper. But the cold war is long over. We are all capitalists now. Time to recognize that a policy bankrupting the U.S. by redirecting wealth from West to East has past its usefulness. The coming recovery should be about rebalancing U.S. and, in turn, global growth.

In today's article, Jenny Wiggins writes (bold face type is mine):

The world’s next Coca-Cola or Starbucks is more likely to emerge from Asia, the Middle East or South America than the US or Europe as global economic wealth shifts.

In research prepared for the Financial Times, Wolff Olins, the consultants behind the London 2012 Olympics logo and the Product Red campaign, has tipped five food and drink brands from emerging markets to become global brands.

They comprise Juan Valdez Café, a Colombian coffee chain; Almarai, a Saudi dairy and fruit-juice company based in Riyadh; Patchi, a Lebanese boutique chocolate chain; ChangYu, China’s biggest wine producer; and United Spirits, India’s largest liquor group, which owns Scotch whisky Whyte & Mackay.

“It used to be possible to be a global brand by dominating the US market,” said Melanie McShane, a strategist at Wolff Olins. “That’s changing rapidly. Now you have to be number one in Asia.......

. . . . . The findings echo research by US business consultancy Bain & Co, which estimated that one-third of the FT Global 500’s companies could come from emerging markets by 2015 thanks to what it calls a “seismic shift” away from developed markets.

Satish Shankar, a Singapore-based partner with Bain & Co, said that established western consumer goods brands were being forced to “battle it out” with emerging market brands as they moved eastwards to take advantage of rising demand for branded products. Some are acquiring local brands, with PepsiCo paying $1.4bn last year for Lebedyansky, Russia’s largest juice group, and Unilever buying Inmarko, the country’s biggest ice cream brand.

Coca-Cola’s attempts to acquire Huiyuan, China’s biggest juice group, for $2.4bn this year were less successful – Chinese regulators blocked the deal.

'nuff said.