Earlier this year, several credit rating agencies downgraded Greece from a developed market to an emerging market, which got me thinking about the paradoxes of this downgrade.

On one hand, Greece was never really a developed market to start with. On the other hand, investors have been flocking to the emerging markets since the credit crisis of 2008. So do they really deserve their sub-standard image? This was the catalyst for what eventually became an article published in The National UAE. You can read the full text here.

Nick Pardini of Nomadic Capital Investors and Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, author of Brand Breakout: How Emerging Market Brands will Go Global, kindly offered their insights to help me write this article.