Team

Indonesia’s two most valuable homegrown tech companies announced on May 17th that they are merging, marking an important turning point in the growth of Southeast Asia’s digital economy. Ride-hailing decacorn Gojek and e-commerce leader Tokopedia will be combining their businesses into a new entity called GoTo. At an expected valuation of at least $18 bn, GoTo will be the…

In politics, this year is superficially set to be relatively uneventful for Southeast Asia, since there are no major national elections formally scheduled. However, domestic political uncertainties in key markets present a challenge for both political stability and social cohesion and could, as is the case in Malaysia, result in early elections. On the international stage…

As with much of the rest of the world, countries in Southeast Asia are scrambling to roll out covid-19 vaccines. While the region has weathered the pandemic better than others and has managed to keep fatalities relatively low, the economic impact of the covid-19 outbreak has been severe. It has been the largest growth shock for Southeast Asia since the Asian Financial…

Global Macro Practice Lead Thomas Gratowski, and Senior Associates Isabelle Trick and Brigitta Kinadi examine how Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are approaching covid-19 vaccines and look at how well different emerging markets are positioned to achieve vaccine targets. They also explore how countries have handled the transmission of cases and and when we might be able to…