Speaking in Sydney yesterday, Singapore-based Capital Group investment director Andy Budden spoke about the “new geography of investment” that globalisation has created.
“The approaches that many investors use to build global portfolios are actually pretty obsolete,” Mr Budden said.
Focusing on where a company is domiciled, as opposed to where it derives its revenue from, is misguided to say the least, he said.
“If you want to understand a company, it’s not enough just to think about it in terms of where it receives its mail or where its headquarters are,” Mr Budden said.
Taking Australia as an example, he pointed out that 34 per cent of the revenue of companies in the ASX200 comes from outside Australia.
Meanwhile, as little as 5 per cent of resources giant BHP Billiton’s revenue comes from Australia (61 per cent coming from emerging and frontier markets).
Twenty-one per cent of MSCI World Index revenues come from emerging and frontier markets, said Mr Budden.
“That’s a really interesting demonstration of how the geography of investing has changed,” he said. “The old geography of investing is no longer enough for building a portfolio.”
Mr Budden is in Australia promoting the Capital Group New Perspective fund, which invests in multinational companies and was made available to Australian investors in November 2015.
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