Frontier: An Emerging Markets Story by Jonathan Young (SIGNED)

Emerging markets have been promoted by financiers since the late 1980s. The idea was correct: these economies have delivered over three quarters of global growth. Yet the long years of hopeful fanfare, false dawns and woeful returns have proven that bankrolling the end of history was easier said than done. For some, stunning financial coups; for many, catastrophic losses; for all, an odyssey from which none would return unaltered. Frontier is the epic account of fortunes and friendships made and destroyed at the turbulent event horizon of capitalism, as the smart Western money ventured beyond the crumbling Berlin Wall. But three decades on, mystified by our clinical, disconnected ways, the countries of the East and global South are turning elsewhere for the capital they desperately need. Amidst the roiling drama of the emerging markets lies the answer to the one question few going eastward ever thought to ask: who really are the extraordinary peoples building new countries at the frontier of capitalism – and what do they want?

‘A gripping chronicle of the West’s interest in emerging markets... Young uniquely dissects financial follies and mismatched expectations of Westerners as they tried to embrace the different and complex economies, societies and cultures of the
East... accessible, illuminating and deeply informed... an important account of why assumptions about how free markets and democracy operate in the west cannot be
simply channelled elsewhere’
Tej Parikh, Economics Leader Writer at Financial Times

‘Fascinating and insightful... a deep understanding of the often surprising way business and politics have developed in the markets of Eastern Europe and the Middle East... a “must read” for anyone interested in emerging markets’
Mark Mobius, CEO, Mobius Investments &
fmr Executive Chairman, Templeton Emerging Markets Group

‘Frontier is not another sanitised ESG report: a richly anecdotal, witty and brutally informed travelogue through financial arrogance, misguided optimism and cultural confusion – when global finance collided with post-communist ambition in the so called CEEMEA region’
Ludovic Phalippou, Professor of Financial Economics,
Oxford Saïd Business School & author of Private Equity Laid Bare

‘At a time when Europe preoccupies itself with an uncertain future, Frontier, is a thoughtful and highly readable evocation of the days when an adrenaline-fuelled pack of financiers and chancers headed in search of a gold rush to the wild frontier of
emerging capitalism — and often emerged with more pratfalls than profits... poignant, funny — and often prophetic... a dashing surprise of a book — and a reminder of how markets shape and reflect the madcap variety human beings who make them’
Anne McElvoy, Executive Editor at POLITICO &
fmr Times correspondent in Berlin, the Balkans and Moscow