Mirror, mirror, on the wall, is South East Asia the fairest emerging market of them all?

Is South East Asia the Snow White of the global consulting market? Clocking up 7% growth in 2013 and set to grow even more over the coming year, it certainly looks to be one of the ‘fairest’ markets around, and the consultants we spoke to are positively overflowing with enthusiasm for the region.

But hang on a second – haven’t we been here before? Remember when Brazil was flavour of the month? What about all that hype around Turkey? And India turned out to be a little disappointing and quite a bit more effort than initially supposed… The title of Most Hotly Tipped Emerging Market seems to change fairly frequently, so is South East Asia all it’s cracked up to be?  Or will we soon be cooing over another market?

We’ve spent much of the last few months researching emerging markets in detail to get beneath the hype and work out what the prospects for consultants really are. When you line them all up, South East Asia outshines many: Brazil’s growth is slowing, and it remains to be seen whether the new government has what it takes to turn the economy around; Turkey’s growth is OK, but its fragile economy mean there could be troubled times ahead; and Mexico has great aspirations of reform but needs to overcome deeply entrenched problems to have any chance of unlocking its potential.

Looking at the rest of the line-up, South East Asia’s stiffest competition is the GCC: revenue per consultant is far higher in the GCC, talent is slightly easier to come by, and the overall propensity to buy consulting is higher than it is in South East Asia.

So South East Asia may not be the ‘fairest’ by those particular measures, but it’s got plenty going for it. Politically, it’s relatively stable, and the ASEAN economic area is forecast to grow by an impressive 5% every year from now until 2018 at least. There are weaknesses – most notably that talent is in very short supply – but with millions joining the ranks of the middle classes, consumer spending is booming, and clients are ambitious about their projects and plans for the future. All of this bodes very well for consultants looking to build their business here.

And of course, there are the less obvious things to take into account: have you seen the beaches of Thailand, or the jungles of Malaysia? Perhaps it is the fairest after all…