Rising Asian affluence boosts consumer shares

Bangkok

WHEN Samak Srisarakham first came to Bangkok as an 11-year-old with his older brother, he slept in bare-bones communal bedding next to a tennis court. He could barely imagine growing up to a life of fancy restaurants, new clothes and the latest electronics.

Yet 30 years later, he's a tennis coach in the Thai capital, and a perfect illustration of what former Goldman Sachs Asset Management chair Jim O'Neill calls "the biggest story in the world" when it comes to investing: the rise of the emerging-market consumer.

Originally from a poor town in ru…