Having been to the Far East last year, I was particularly impressed by Singapore. It is an impressive place for several reasons - it has a very strong state, as well as an appetite for trade (in fact, the main reason it was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819).
Jardine Matheson ('Jardines') is one of the oldest companies that operates out of Singapore, and boy is it involved in a lot of things. Pulled straight from Wikipedia:
'Today, Jardines is a Fortune Global 500 company[2] that consists of Jardine Pacific, Jardine Motors Group, Jardine Strategic, Dairy Farm, Hongkong Land, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Jardine Cycle & Carriage and Astra International.[3][4][5] It also owns Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group and has an investment (21%) in Rothschilds Continuation Holdings, the merchant banking house.'Impressive stuff - a real classical conglomerate. Looking through the list you will see if is a play on Far Eastern growth - or at least that's the theory behind my purchase.
It's not the most generous of dividend companies - the 12 month trailing dividend is 2.25% for the main listing (remember, I have bought an ADR), but it has huge exposure to a part of the world that is going to be more and more consumer orientated during my lifetime.
Laura was enthusiastic about the stock too (she liked Singapore....), and I was lucky (time will tell?!) enough to time my buy as the UK stock market was tumbling - so I picked up 20% more than I would usually do.
