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US-Japan security ties will remain robust under President Donald Trump, as both countries focus on co-operation to counter-balance a rising China and increasingly nuclearised North Korea. Washington and Tokyo will still disagree over trade issues, but these disputes will largely be segregated from military ties.

The US-Japan security alliance will

The pharmaceutical and healthcare markets of North Africa will continue to present sizeable commercial opportunities within MENA for international drugmakers. While discrepancies exist at the national level with regard to market attractiveness, when taken as a whole, the region's close proximity to both European and African markets and its

Asian power markets outperform the global risk/reward index, as strong opportunities are balanced against relatively lower risks. Within the region, we highlight Malaysia and Australia as notable investment bright spots. Whereas, smaller power markets which continue to suffer from high operational and industry-specific risks, such as Laos, Cambodia

Emerging market (EM) growth is picking up steam amid more buoyant demand in developed economies, but performance will be highly mixed. In this chartpack, we outline the key themes that we expect to play out across EMs over the coming quarters:

• Commodity exporters (Brazil, Russia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia) will struggle to recover.

• China and

The most interesting aspect of the sale of Tigo Senegal is the buyer, the Wari Group. It is a digital financial services platform, whose aim is to improve its position in the market by becoming an operator, and targeting Orange and its successful Orange Money service. As such, this deal is the reverse of traditional MFS expansion strategies and

We believe that Snap, which has just filed its IPO, is more likely to be the new Twitter than the new Facebook. Four reasons underpin our view: strong market competition, low prospects for profitability, an unclear business model and weak corporate governance.

Snap has filed an USD3bn Initial Public Offering (IPO), which would make the company

The Balkans region will see rising instability and unrest over the coming years, as a result of ethnic or social tensions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, and Macedonia, the spectre of Islamic State (IS) gaining a foothold in the region, and the probable weakening of the EU as a policy anchor. Meanwhile, ongoing geopolitical rivalry between

Nigus Enfinity's plans to start importing EVs into Nigeria from 2018 and assembling these vehicles by 2020 will meet considerable challenges in the form of affordability issues faced by the majority of Nigerians, an unreliable power supply and non-existent charging infrastructure.

In August 2017, Nigerian company Nigus Enfinity announced that it

Global rating outlooks are more negative than a year ago across most rating sectors.

"The greatest challenges are undoubtedly faced by emerging market issuers in all sectors, but this is a global trend - the outlook bias is also negative for developed-market entities across the majority of sectors," said Monica Insoll, Managing Director, in Fitch

Short-Term Outlook (three-to-six months)

We now hold a neutral view on cocoa prices over the short term as we expect cocoa to bottom and trade sideways over H117 following a tumble in cocoa prices over H216 on the back of improved fundamentals and bearish sentiment. Although a good 2016/17 West African season will improve global supply over 2017