Private equity: "India zooms past China"?

Chest-thumping, statistic-twisting propaganda from India's Financial Express, purports to show that India is Asia's most favoured market for private equity. In January (whether 2006 or 2007 is unspecified), according to the article,

India has emerged as the most favoured private equity destination attracting $1,239.22 million worth investments in January, surpassing Asian giants like China and Japan, a study says. India ranks top in terms of PE investments in January-February and has left behind Asian giants like China with $ 609 million and Japan with USD 980 million, according to a report by Asian Venture Capital Journal (AVCJ).

Link: India zooms past China

How useful such a statistic is supposed to be beyond... no, wait. I can't think of a single situation where such a statistic could be useful. Anyone with the slightest interest in private equity should know that this is an asset class where:

• Investors can be counted in dozens and scores as compared to the millions who participate in the public markets
• Investments are similarly few in number (both because of long due diligence processes and an absolute small number of deals in consideration at any given point)

To then state that one country is the favoured destination for private equity based simply on data for one month smacks of ignorance, incompetence and propaganda. Even if the headline conclusion is attributable to the AVCJ (I suspect not) and not to the FE directly, it is a journalist's job to raise questions, not blindly repeat other people's nonsense.

The same article then goes on to provide the following broader statistics:

Asian PE investments in 2006:

• Australia: $24.9B
• Japan: $10.4B
• China: $7.7B
• India: $7.0B

2006 growth in funds raised:

• Australia: 88.9%
• China: 72.1%
• India: 37.6%

This is why I think most journalists are idiots mindless stenographers who haven't the faintest what they're writing about.

Disclaimer: I have not read the original AVCJ report upon which the article is based. Kind souls who would like to enlighten me further may please email me at blogfeedback [at] murli [dot] net or leave a comment here.

Technorati Tags: private equity, asia, india

Comments

[Shreekanth]

Murli
your are quite correct about journalists - i dont know about other journalists across the world but quite often journalists dish out info (copied directly) from whosoever gives them "press release" - in these days of internet, it is always useful to check facts, news by going through multiple sources before deciding on anything - in fact what is news or facts is an issue these days...(probably was true even earlier except that we didnt have so much info to even question things dished out by newspapers