Research & Working Papers
17 studies on foreign direct investment, cross-border M&A and capital flows across Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand — by Harvey Luu Trong (Lưu Trọng An Hà), Founder & Managing Partner.
Reinvestment as Revealed Confidence: Reading Vietnam's Foreign Direct Investment Beyond the New-Licence Headcount
Why the reinvestment decisions of firms already in Vietnam read the economy better than the headline count of new licences.
Trade Without Capital: Reading Australia's Investment Gap with Southeast Asia
Australia holds less FDI in all of ASEAN than in New Zealand alone — why the investment relationship lags the trade relationship, and what would close it.
The Global Minimum Tax and Foreign Direct Investment in Southeast Asia: Adoption, Incentive Redesign, and the Turn from Tax to Cash
How the ASEAN-5 adopted the 15% global minimum tax and replaced tax holidays with cash grants and refundable credits.
Foreign Investment in Vietnam: A Review of the Evidence
A thematic field-map of four decades of research on FDI in Vietnam, with reusable classification tables.
The China-Plus-One Paradox: Vietnam's Foreign-Investment Boom and Its Rerouting Vulnerability
Vietnam is the leading China-plus-one destination, yet the same data expose it to the 2025 US transshipment tariff.
The Provincial Geography of Foreign Investment in Vietnam: Concentration, the Northern Shift, and the 2025 Redraw
An atlas of Vietnam's FDI by province — the northern shift of 2024 and the 63-to-34 province merger of 2025.
Southeast Asia Foreign Direct Investment Monitor 2025: A Comparative Data Compendium
A comparative FDI compendium for the ASEAN-6, built on the one measurement rule most comparisons get wrong.
Sorted by Segment, Not by Cost: The Value-Chain Geography of Semiconductor Investment in East and Southeast Asia
Mapping flagship chip investments since 2021, the paper finds capital divides by value-chain segment, not wage level: front-end fabrication in the north, assembly-testing-packaging in the…
The Battery Corridor: Nickel, Overcapacity and the Chinese EV Supply Chain's Move into Southeast Asia
Of ~US$143bn in Chinese overseas EV and battery commitments since 2014, Indonesia drew US$22bn — more than any destination worldwide. The corridor is best read as one country's industry…
The Exit Is the Constraint: Cross-Border M&A and Private Capital in Southeast Asia, 2022–2026
Assembling deal, fund and market data, the paper argues the binding constraint on private investment in ASEAN is not entry but exit: the region is built, not bought, and realisation — not…
An Advanced Export Manifest Without the Frontier: FDI, the High-Tech / Low-R&D Inversion and Southeast Asia's Middle-Income Trap
We ask whether FDI, the input Southeast Asia's middle-income economies have secured most reliably, has moved them toward the income frontier, and find it has not. Malaysia…
Sorting by Segment, Not by Wage: Semiconductor FDI and Value-Chain Specialisation in Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, 2021–2026
We map the semiconductor investment drawn into Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam since 2021 and find it sorts almost perfectly by segment of the chip value chain rather than by wage…
The Megawatt Is the Unit: How a Power Constraint Rerouted Southeast Asia's Data-Centre FDI
Data-centre FDI in the region has become an electricity problem before it is a capital problem: Singapore's moratorium relocated demand across the causeway, and grid megawatts now determine…
Japanese Acquisitions in Southeast Asian Finance and Consumer Markets
We assemble a ledger of ten landmark acquisitions by Japanese acquirers of Southeast Asian financial and consumer targets between 2011 and 2023, worth roughly US$18.6bn in disclosed value.…
Batam, Bintan and the Singapore–Indonesia Investment Nexus: Foreign Capital in the Riau Islands
We document that the foreign investment of Indonesia's Riau Islands is, to a first approximation, one city's account with one neighbour. Singapore supplied 69% of Batam's foreign direct…
Why Do Southeast Asia's Largest Companies List in New York Instead of at Home?
We document that the largest Southeast Asian equity listings of the past decade were raised offshore rather than on the region's own exchanges, and that among the marquee US listings the…