Emerging market firms surge in crisis: Study

PARIS: Emerging market companies are doing better than their developed world peers, taking advantage of opportunities thrown up by the global economic slump better than Western rivals, a study showed Tuesday.

The study by business consultancy Ernst & Young said developing economy companies now accounted for just over 30 percent of the 1,000 top global firms, compared with 22 percent in December 2007 and 10 percent in 2000.

Companies from the BRIC group -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- in turn accounted for 75 percent of the 305 firms from the developing world gaining entry to the list of the 1,000 largest by stock market value, it said.

"Indian, Chinese, Brazilian, Korean, Mexican, Russia and even Egyptian companies, even more so compared with before the global crisis, have become the direct competitors of firms in the developed world," it said.

"The West's economic dominance is very probably now being eroded," it added.

The Ernst & Young study -- released in Paris -- noted that emerging economy stock markets have also done well, buoyed by hopes for much better growth rates than will likely be found elsewhere.