Bears beware

The notion that corporate profits still have more room to run on the upside is no minority vision. The bulls are still in control of the psychological tone that permeates our markets and investment predictions generally. Wednesday’s crash and today’s revival could be one source of the tone, but there are plenty of other wells of optimism to draw on. PE investor confidence is another.

Thomson Financial data finds PE investments in India during the year have touched $2.49 billion, as against $1.05 billion in Hong Kong, $1.47 billion in Singapore and $752.2 million for the Chinese market. The total PE funding in India is nearly equal to the PE funding that has come into Hong Kong and Singapore together. So far, 29 PE deals have been struck in India this year, next only to Australia (67) in the entire Asia Pacific region. Though there were 28 PE deals in China, the size of the deals were much smaller. While the average size of the deals in India is $85 million, the deal size in China was only $26 million and $188 million for Australia.

India is also a hot-bed for strategic buys, which include M&A activities, with $29.74 billion worth of strategic deals being struck, again the third highest in the Asia Pacific region. While Australia leads the pack with $76.07 billion of strategic deals, China reported $36.88 billion of such deals. There were a total of 331 M&A deals worth $44.34 billion in India in the first seven months of 2007, as compared to 328 M&A deals worth $10.36 billion in 2006.

Bears beware…!

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