While most of the developed world focuses its attention on fiscal deficit levels, emerging markets are growing strongly and focusing on expansion, leading Equity Trust to highlight the attractive opportunities that lie in Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

The first BRIC economy to be addressed at Equity Trust’s recent “Spotlight BRIC” briefing was Brazil. Emilio Miguel, the firm’s regional commercial director for the Latin American and Caribbean region, noted that that the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games are coming to Brazil and that analysts are predicting a massive 37 per cent growth in the country’s infrastructure by 2013. As such, he predicts that key growth areas will be electrical energy, telecoms, transport and oil.

Next up for examination was Russia, with Peter Hughes, partner at law firm Salans, highlighting the “dramatic” growth the country had shown in the second quarter of this year and the significant expansion expected in the areas of technology, telecoms and public-private partnerships - an upbeat note in contrast to recent fears that the BRIC economies could become the “BIC” economies due to the severity of Russia’s economic downturn. Hughes further noted the positive steps – such as changes to regulations covering visas, capital gains and foreign investment - being taken by the Russian government to tackle problems such as red tape, corruption, crime and technology barriers.

Next under the spotlight was India, where the rise in the working age population and the success of foreign private equity companies have led analysts to forecast high levels of growth in the coming years. Much of the success of foreign private equity companies has been within the retail, telecoms, microfinance, healthcare and green technology sectors, said Bharat Varadachari of Ernst & Young, who added that “the ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem’ is not currently that developed, but there is a shift to a younger generation of decision-makers who are more switched on and open to the idea of private equity investment.”

With regards China, the 90 delegates at the briefing heard that while tight regulation of foreign ownership, time delays, and foreign exchange issues had made it difficult for private equity companies to compete, the Chinese government is making moves to alleviate these problems and is now actively promoting foreign investment. “It’s very encouraging to see Chinese domestic and foreign capital being pooled in the same vehicle and thereby able to compete with local players,” said Jonathan Shenkman, head of private investments at Paul Hastings.