Hello, I’m Martin Hutchinson, and I’d like to welcome you to the new service that is replacing Australian Edge, though it is more of an evolution than a change. The new service is Pacific Wealth, and in a week you will be getting your first issue.

This weekly story, previously Down Under Digest, is now Pacific Digest, as you see.

You have been investing in Australia, and I’d like to reassure you that I’m convinced Australian investment continues to be a good idea. But Australia’s greatest strength, even more than her mineral resources, is that she’s part of the Pacific Basin region, the world’s greatest wealth generator both now and for the next generation. So I hope you’ll agree with me that broadening your focus to the entire Pacific Basin is the best, most profitable course.

First, I’d like to tell you a little about me. I am a British born graduate of Cambridge’s Trinity College, and of Harvard Business School. I went into merchant banking upon graduation from Harvard and spent a 27-year career in international banking and consultancy.

My interest in the Pacific basin began in childhood, three years of which was spent in Singapore, which became independent from Britain and began its extraordinary growth story under Lee Kuan Yew while I was there.

My research report at Harvard was on investment in Malaysia, much of my early merchant banking experience was in Japan, I spent three years doing investment banking in Latin America, mostly the Pacific countries, and I was for five years advisor to the Korean conglomerate Sunkyong. So my financial expertise is wholly international, largely emerging markets, and within emerging markets largely Pacific Basin-focused.

You can see why investing in the Pacific Basin is a good idea just by looking at growth rates. According to the Economist magazine’s team of forecasters, the United States will have an average growth rate of 2.7% over the two years 2015-16. I actually believe that estimate is high – it doesn’t take into account the tiny 0.8% growth in the first quarter of 2015, or the shocking decline in productivity in the last two quarters.

The Eurozone, your non-Pacific alternative for investing outside the U.S., is expected to grow by 1.7% on average. Australia, where the Australian Edge service has concentrated, is expected to grow at an average of 2.6%, a similar rate to the U.S.

However even most of the richer countries of the Pacific Basin are expected to grow faster – Singapore and South Korea at 3.2%, Taiwan at 3.4%. Japanese growth is disappointing at only 1.2%, but then look at the growth rates in the best emerging Pacific Basin countries.

You knew about China, expected to grow at an average of 6.8%, but there’s also the Philippines, expected to grow at 6.6%, Vietnam at 6.3%, Malaysia at 5.5% and Indonesia at 5.3%. Overall, according to the International Monetary Fund, emerging Asia is expected to be the fastest growing region in the world, growing at an average of 6.5% in the next two years. And there’s an additional benefit: some of these fast-growing countries, notably Philippines and Malaysia, are running substantial current account surpluses, which means they’re in no danger of running out of money when the next credit crunch hits.

The eastern Pacific Basin (what the rest of us think of as the West Coast of Canada and the U.S., and the West Coast Latin American countries) are no slouches either. Four of them, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile, have formed a Pacific Alliance to generate more business with Asia.

Their growth rates in 2015-16, according to the Economist, are Mexico 3.1%, Colombia 3.8%, Peru 4.8% and Chile 3.5%–all of them ticking along nicely, in spite of lower prices for their oil and mineral exports.

That’s the case for investment in the Pacific Basin: it’s the world’s fastest growing region, it diversifies you from U.S. difficulties, and most of its countries have decent governance – you can rely on their companies’ accounts and on the security of your property as investors. It’s tough for U.S. investors to get good information on the region, particularly the political/economic factors, but that’s where experience helps.

We’ll have new investments (and many favorites from Australian Edge) in our first Pacific Wealth issue next week, and we’ll keep tracking the other AE portfolio investments for you.

This is an exciting time to be profiting from other Pacific Basin countries, and I’m looking forward to working with you over the coming years.