Fresh look at Eastern Europe

ON EMs

Spring has traditionally been a time to celebrate new beginnings, and for this reason it certainly feels an apt time to be discussing fresh perspectives on the Eastern European markets.

Emerging Europe has laboured for some time under frosty investor sentiment as the least-glamorous region of the emerging markets. This has been caused in large part by the chill blowing from a Western Europe struggling under a weighty sovereign debt burden. As a result, the region is trading at exceptionally cheap valuations; almost half the aggregate price-earnings multiples of emerging markets. But with funding markets calmer post-LTRO, a more rational assessment can be made; emerging Europe is a world apart from the troubled ‘peripheral Europe’ in economic terms, if not geographically...