Emerging markets: has the Brics dream survived reality?

Two decades ago the “Brics” – Brazil, Russia, India and China – were the global economy's rising stars, with expectations high for their rapid development. Max King looks at how things have panned out.

Brics leaders
The Brics’ development has fallen short of projections
(Image credit: © Alexei Druzhinin\TASS via Getty Images)

(John here – just a reminder to sign up for this month’s webinar, where I’ll be talking to Roland Arnold, manager of the popular BlackRock Smaller Companies investment trust, all about his views on prospects for Britain’s smaller companies. Make sure you don’t miss it – register here now. It’s entirely free and you can catch up later if you can’t join on the day, but do be sure to register.)

It is 20 years since Jim, now Lord, O’Neill coined the Bric acronym to cover the four most significant emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India and China.

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Max King
Investment Writer

Max has an Economics degree from the University of Cambridge and is a chartered accountant. He worked at Investec Asset Management for 12 years, managing multi-asset funds investing in internally and externally managed funds, including investment trusts. This included a fund of investment trusts which grew to £120m+. Max has managed ten investment trusts (winning many awards) and sat on the boards of three trusts – two directorships are still active.

After 39 years in financial services, including 30 as a professional fund manager, Max took semi-retirement in 2017. Max has been a MoneyWeek columnist since 2016 writing about investment funds and more generally on markets online, plus occasional opinion pieces. He also writes for the Investment Trust Handbook each year and has contributed to The Daily Telegraph and other publications. See here for details of current investments held by Max.