Seven of the 10 frontier markets most frequently tracked by multinationals are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, 13% percent fewer multinationals are tracking Ukraine following its ongoing bout with political and economic volatility.
These figures come from FSG’s Frontier Markets Sentiment Index recently published in The Wall Street Journal’s Frontier Markets section. FSG began its partnership with The Wall Street Journal six months ago with the goal of developing a proprietary index that describes corporate sentiment about frontier markets (as defined by the WSJ).
The index relies on anonymous metadata from our clients’ online market prioritization tools to create two proprietary metrics. The first metric is a market inclusion rate which shows the percentage of multinationals tracking a specific market. Argentina has the second-highest market inclusion rate (25%) as companies track it closely while the economy struggles. The second metric is market sentiment which measures period-on-period change in the market inclusion rate. Changes in market sentiment reflect corporate perceptions about frontier markets in response to the changing business and macroeconomic environments.
Matt Lasov, FSG’s Global Head of Advisory and Analytics, alongside with Sam Osborn, Practice Leader on the Global Analytics team, constructed the index in partnership with The Wall Street Journal. Describing the renewed corporate interest in frontier markets, Sam Osborn says that “we see a paradigm shift of attention from the BRICS, a cluster of countries once admired for high-level growth, to frontier markets. Frontier markets, though often undeveloped and full of business challenges, provide a great opportunity for many of our clients in the medium-to-long-run as their demographic and economic advantages are bolstered by additional investment flows.”
FSG and The Wall Street Journal will update the Frontier Market Sentiment Index on a quarterly basis.
For more information about the index contact: Marketing@FrontierStrategyGroup.com
Great tool!
Key is to ensure that companies do not get into a group-think cycle and end up missing opportunities that other multinationals may be overlooking.