Here are some of the views of global financial instutitions on Indian election results

GOLDMAN SACHS:

“Currently, the macro challenges that India faces in terms of external and fiscal imbalances, high inflation and tight monetary policy are being dominated by expectations of political change,” Goldman said in its 18-page report, ‘Modi-fying our View: Raise India to Marketweight’ in November 2013.

The bank added: “BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could prevail in the next Parliamentary elections that are due by May 2014. Equity investors tend to view the BJP as business-friendly, and the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi as an agent of change.”

NOMURA SECURITIES:

“Nomura expects a BJP-led coalition to form the next government at the Centre after the 2014 elections,” Alastair Newton, a political analyst at the Japanese brokerage said in a note in November.

However he added: “A stable government, regardless of whether it is led by the BJP or the Congress, should support a gradual business cycle recovery.”

CLSA (Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia):

In his weekly newsletter Greed & Fear, Christopher Wood, strategist at CLSA Asia Pacific Markets, wrote in November: “India’s electorate is pining for a change and, in particular, the return of a government focused on a growth mandate rather than a mandate based on the promise of more handouts on the ‘alleviation of poverty’ theme...”

UBS:

UBS Wealth Management investment officer Kelvin Tay in a January interview to Indian business paper Mint said:

“The markets right now favour [Narendra] Modi’s accession to power. As the opinion polls have been rising in favour of Modi, the stock markets, too, have been rising and doing very well—whether that holds true in the next couple of months remains to be seen.

“If Modi comes to power, does it mean that he will be able to have a majority—we are not too sure about that. Will he get coalition partners —there is a big question mark there. If Modi comes to power, it is a very big assumption that you have to make, that he will do much better than the Congress. The sentiment on the market seems to suggest that.”

JP Morgan:

“Politics is more of a distraction to foreign investors. They do not invest in India because of what the government can do. They invest because they can find good companies. What is central is company profits, return on equity, leverage and so on,” says Geoff Lewis, executive director and global market strategist with JP Morgan.

— Compiled from company and media reports