Chief Economist & Political Strategist, CrossASEAN Research

Prasenjit K. Basu

PK Basu has 34 years experience covering Asia's economies and markets (equities, fixed income and currencies), including 20 years covering the global economy. He was Chief Economist (SE Asia & India) at Credit Suisse First Boston for 5 years, and Chief Asia (x-Jpn) Economist at Daiwa Securities for a similar period. Among other roles, he was global head of research at Maybank Kim Eng, Malaysia equity research head and chief ASEAN economist at Macquarie, Chief Economist at ICICI Securities, ASEAN economist at UBS and the first chief economist at Khazanah Nasional (where he was co-head of research, and led all agri-business initiatives). PK Basu started his career in the Asia Service of WEFA (Wharton Econometrics) in Philadelphia in 1990, rising to be Director of their Asia Service in June 1994. 
PK's book, "Asia Reborn: A continent rises from the ravages of Colonialism and War to a New Dynamism" won the Tata Literature First Book Award (non-fiction) for 2018. It is the first single chronicle of the modern economic and political history of the whole of Asia (from Iraq and Turkey to Korea and Japan, and everything in between), told from an Asian perspective.

Chief Economist & Political Strategist

Sino-US/ Tech/ Covid-19/ Exercise/ Babies

China: Succumbing to Excess Capacity in Industry and Real-Estate, & Capital Flight

China Has Been the Global Winner from the Liquidity Glut of 2008-21; Now Comes Pain

Biden's "Socialist" Remake of the US: How Much Will Be Too Much for the Blue Dogs?

Biden Stimulus+ Will Be Inflationary; Policy Stability Is Enabling a More Leftward Tilt

CrossASEAN Research

At CrossASEAN Research we strive to produce unbiased and differentiated on the ground insights on companies across South East Asia. Our Research is produced for the most part after face to face meetings and conversations with company management to dig deep into the long term vision and strategy of the companies we cover. We seek to deliver investable and actionable themes on sectors and markets across SE Asia, often in collaboration with other Insight Providers across the region, pooling the vast experience of the analysts within the Smartkarma Ecosystem. We also offer bespoke work and tailor made trips for our clients. 

Insights across South East Asia

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

China It services / Thematic (Sector/Industry)

To be the richest man in communist China is a dangerous perch. Jack Ma of Alibaba and Ant Financial was only the latest in a long line of those answering to the title of "China's richest person" who have had their assets either expropriated outright or suffered severe value-destruction through sudden, arbitrary regulatory actions by the Chinese authorities. Huang Guangyu of the electronics-retail group Gome was arrested in 2011 (when he was China's richest man) and spent a decade in prison/detention before returning to his company earlier this year. Alibaba, "China's Amazon" but with a bigger valuation given the size of its market opportunity -- and its celebrated fintech subsidiary Ant Financial (creator of Alipay, and an increasingly sophisticated payments infrastructure and internet-based bank) -- had clearly become too big for the CCP (Chinese communist party) to control. For millennia, China's rulers have prized centralized control above all else (hence the perceived need to stamp out fissiparous tendencies in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia -- and the outlandish claims that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China). Independent privately-owned companies that dominate the technology frontier (like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu) are clearly seen as threats to that centralized control by the CCP.The latest victims of China's arbitrary regulatory actions are shareholders of the ride-hailing company <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/didi-chuxing-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:27467:1" rel="noopener">DiDi Global (DIDI US)</a>; a couple of days after its New York IPO, Didi Chuxing was ordered to stop signing up new users, and numerous other regulatory actions were taken against the company (including removing its app from all domestic app stores). Later in July, the entire US$100 billion tutoring business in China came under severe regulatory pressure, forcing companies in the sector to operate purely on a "non-profit" basis. Companies listing abroad are facing increasingly severe regulatory scrutiny. Investors need to be aware that expropriation risk for private businesses is very real in communist China, and the valuations of all privately-owned companies need to incorporate a significant "China premium" (i.e., valuations that are 30-40% of what they might be without that expropriation risk) before investors can safely hold onto them.

To be the richest man in communist China is a dangerous perch. Jack Ma of Alibaba and Ant Financial was only the latest in a long line of those answering to the title of "China's richest person" who have had their assets either expropriated outright or suffered severe value-destruction through sudden, arbitrary regulatory actions by the Chinese authorities. Huang Guangyu of the electronics-retail group Gome was arrested in 2011 (when he was China's richest man) and spent a decade in prison/detention before returning to his company earlier this year. Alibaba, "China's Amazon" but with a bigger valuation given the size of its market opportunity -- and its celebrated fintech subsidiary Ant Financial (creator of Alipay, and an increasingly sophisticated payments infrastructure and internet-based bank) -- had clearly become too big for the CCP (Chinese communist party) to control. For millennia, China's rulers have prized centralized control above all else (hence the perceived need to stamp out fissiparous tendencies in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia -- and the outlandish claims that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China). Independent privately-owned companies that dominate the technology frontier (like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu) are clearly seen as threats to that centralized control by the CCP.The latest victims of China's arbitrary regulatory actions are shareholders of the ride-hailing company DiDi Global (DIDI US); a couple of days after its New York IPO, Didi Chuxing was ordered to stop signing up new users, and numerous other regulatory actions were taken against the company (including removing its app from all domestic app stores). Later in July, the entire US$100 billion tutoring business in China came under severe regulatory pressure, forcing companies in the sector to operate purely on a "non-profit" basis. Companies listing abroad are facing increasingly severe regulatory scrutiny. Investors need to be aware that expropriation risk for private businesses is very real in communist China, and the valuations of all privately-owned companies need to incorporate a significant "China premium" (i.e., valuations that are 30-40% of what they might be without that expropriation risk) before investors can safely hold onto them. 

China Premium: Expropriation Risk Needs to Be Priced in to Privately-Owned Companies