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I always believe in following parties that have skin in the game rather than those that treat a market as merely peripheral. In emerging and frontier markets, Renaissance Capital is definitely committed rather than involved. Started as a Moscow-based investment bank by eccentric New Zealander Stephen Jennings, Renaissance has been investing in Africa when its peers have been pulling out. It bought the institutional wing of Barnard Jacobs Mellet, where it has prominent analysts Ilan Stermer and Francois du Toit. David Ferguson covers media and telecoms from Moscow. It is now a leading stockbroker in Nigeria and Kenya. Where Renaissance must get credit is that it does not just cherry-pick the big projects and big companies in emerging markets, but operates deep in frontier markets. It doesn’t push too hard for low-margin business in Poland and Hungary, but it floated the first eurobond issue in Moldova. It has recently issued bonds for the Kazakhstan state railway, the Bank of Georgia...
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