What motivates 23 FLI NET Partners to republish the Practical Law Investing in… Global Guide again this year? There is a growing trend among corporate clients to demand and expect their legal service providers to advise them on potential investment opportunities.

As clients of all shapes and sizes consult the law firms across our FLI spectrum, it is difficult for them to point the clients in the right direction without undertaking the role of financial advisers. It is no longer sufficient for law firms to introduce their clients to a well-known financial investment firm. Indeed, more and more partners in law firms are expected to advise on the location of good investment opportunities and act as the mediator between prospective buyer and seller while looking after the interests of their clients, who are often based offshore. Therefore, there is a need for a valuable network of like-minded, business-oriented law firms to provide the groundwork of the local investment climate.

While the global financial crisis ushered in by the collapse of Lehman Brothers was a disaster for banks, brokerages, insurers and investors, as credit seized up and equity markets tanked, the private equity (PE) sector withstood the crisis far better than expected.

Although the financial crisis and the global downturn that followed proved disastrous for small shops and new businesses (wiping out over 26% of the buyout firms), it barely affected the PE sector.

For the first time in history, the substantial amount of capital (US$1.31 trillion at present) has had significant implications for investment opportunities. The substantial amount of capital combined with the capital generated in 2015 alone has dramatically increased the already sizable backlog of potential investments.

With such a substantial amount of liquid funds on call, this has turned into a seller's market. The dry powder available for productive investments has further stoked already intense bidding battles with more competition on every deal and shorter time limits imposed by the banks that bring deals to market. Companies and their legal departments have less time to be selective and undertake comprehensive due diligence (which was the norm only a few years ago). Today's auctions often leave potential buyers with little alternative but to "bid the book"(that is, to accept on good faith the seller's assertions about a target company's market position and growth potential). Without sound legal safeguards in place, this is a risky gamble.

To complicate matters further, other wealthy strategic buyers are fuelling an historic drive for corporate M&As. The announced value of global corporate M&A transactions topped US$4 trillion in 2015 (more than a 40% increase), surpassing the pre-Lehman 2007 peak and dwarfing total PE deal activity. How do corporates and their M&A departments and in-house legal team make sense of the market? Where should they compete without placing themselves in harm's way? Therefore, relying on a like-minded network of business-oriented law firms, which can point to the right potential local investment targets, is invaluable.

As seen in bold in the chart below, while there are opportunities around the world, the emerging markets continue to attract the higher investments.

The so-called "Asian century" will open a new chapter in global geopolitics. In 2025, nearly two thirds of the world population will live in Asia. Asia will become the first producer and exporter of the world and will catch up with (and probably overtake) the US and Europe in research. By 2025, the Asia-Pacific market, driven by China's growth, will represent nearly 60% of global infrastructure spending and western Europe's share will shrink to less than 10% (a 50% reduction from just a few years ago). This will inevitably result in a shift in global economic power, potentially leading to competing economic ideologies and specifically the following:

As the President of a global elite network of law firms in nearly 80 countries, I am confident that this year's Investing in…Global Guide will soon become a household title for a rapidly growing audience of professionals eager to obtain insightful information, which can only be provided by local law firms with the relevant internal know-how. This guide provides the reader with facts, figures and opinions that are not readily available in the market place. Unlike other investment publications, this guide seeks to raise questions while providing insight to assist the reader's search for the right investment opportunity, be it for his own company or for a corporate client.

The following sources were consulted for this foreword: 2016 Bain & Company "Global Private Equity" report and the Hodgard & Associates "Global Trends and Independent Law Firms" report.