Capital Ideas Podcast Adventures in emerging markets investing
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Mar 12, 2026 Lisa Thompson, a portfolio manager with decades covering emerging markets, shares how global travel and on-the-ground research shaped her investing approach. She discusses China’s long transformation, surprising opportunities from company visits, governance shifts in Europe and Japan, contrarian plays in banks and cyclicals, and why macro and political cycles now matter everywhere.
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Decades Of Company Meetings Around The World
- Lisa Thompson logged roughly 69 countries visited and estimated 10,000 to 14,000 company meetings over her career.
- She used a rough six-to-eight meetings per week model to reach the 10,000–14,000 meeting estimate, referencing the 10,000-hours mastery idea.
China's Three Decade Infrastructure Transformation
- China transformed massively over 30 years driven by continuous infrastructure investment, producing high growth even as it slows.
- Lisa contrasts today's China to 30 years ago, attributing visible change to sustained, large-scale infrastructure spending.
Seeing Corporate Governance Change In Japan And Germany
- Lisa described visiting Germany and Japan and seeing shifts in corporate priorities toward shareholder returns and reform.
- She recounted Japan's corporate governance push that moved firms from preserving employment to focusing on shareholder returns as a government-led sea change.