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Asia is the dominant part of emerging markets and emerging markets has struggled for quite some time now. Within Asia, there are some really exciting places, and probably the best place to start is the largest markets. China, Japan and more recently India have been particularly interesting for different reasons.
Japan and India have had an exceptionally good run in terms of the local equity markets and we think structurally both these countries are very attractive in their own right.
On the other hand, China, which dominates the Asian and in fact the emerging market benchmarks, has had a really difficult couple of years and there are some structural issues facing that market but where the valuations are for China right now I think that looks particularly interesting at the moment as well if you look at a point in time.
There's a lot of things to be interested about in Asia and in terms of potential investment opportunities out there and within those large markets, we're fortunate to have specific country funds looking at Japan which is run by Maya Funaki as well as China run by Siguo Chen and obviously we also cover Asia as a broader construct via an Asia Ex Japan fund which gives us exposure into the Indian and other exciting smaller markets around the region.
I think the biggest opportunities remain in some of the larger markets where there are globally competitive franchises with world-class companies that can really attract investors from a global perspective as well as just in Asia or an emerging markets perspective.
We have a process that we've developed since the team's been together. We started together in 2013. We're fundamental, bottom-up driven, medium to long duration investors and we have certain criteria that we think make for good businesses.
They tend to be return on investor capital focused. We're looking for good businesses in relatively good industries, favorable industries. We're not entirely dogmatic about what sectors we're in and so on, but we do try and focus on having management who have the same incentive structure as shareholders, but ones which will work for the long term for the benefit of all stakeholders.
We're very ESG-oriented, as is the whole of RBC as a firm, and in this part of the world, that is quite important because it does mean that we create a more laser-like focus on what companies we can invest in. We spend a lot of time doing research, on-the-ground research, we spend time visiting all the countries and companies that we invest in and we have 11 or 12 regional markets that we're traveling in a lot. That on-site, kicking the tires, really doing in-depth, on-the-ground research helps us identify what we think are the good long-term stories for this part of the world.