Soros, Temasek Buy into Indian Stock Exchanges

Billionaire George Soros' Soros Fund Management is finalizing a deal to buy 4% of Bombay Stock Exchange, one of India's two exchanges, for approximately USD 40 million. The deal might be seen as "merely" symbolic (the amount is relatively small, the share is very far from controlling, etc.) but, in the world of international finance, symbols matter a great deal. This is especially so as recently Singapore's Temasek has bought approximately 5% of India's other major exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India (for USD 145 million). The two moves together indicate something much more significant than just "a sign of confidence in the Bombay Stock Exchange," as suggested by the latter's chief executive, Madhu Kannan.

It is a sign of confidence in India's global economic weight--in historical perspective, likely an issue for the geopolitical entities that have dominated the history of global capitalism for the last two-to-four centuries (western European and north American capital and states).