Newsroom & Opinion

Institutional Investor’s Alpha: The Morning Brief: SALT, Day 2 – Trades, Activism and Boehner

May 13, 2016
In the News

Institutional Investor’s Alpha highlights Cartica CEO Teresa Barger’s comments on the unique complexities of emerging markets activism on her panel at the SALT 2016 Conference.

Teresa Barger of Cartica Management positions herself as the only global emerging markets activist fund. She pointed out that 85 percent of all EM listed companies are controlled by a shareholder, family, founder or estate. “So our approach has to be different,” she said.

Barger starts with country selection. For example, she is currently avoiding countries like Brazil where there is negative growth. Then she picks the companies. She looks for companies with good balance sheets where she is sure owners and founders really care about increasing their value.She singled out Voltronic Power, a Taiwanese supplier of products to the power market. She said the company has 52 percent of its assets in cash and pointed out to the company different ways it could boost its return on equity. “They said no one ever talked to them about this,” she said.