The investment traffic between Australia and its Asian neighbors is lopsided in favor of Aussies. Asian investments in Australia are 1.5 times that of Australian investment in Asia.

Masaki Takayanagi, chief executive of SBI Ven Capital, disclosed at the Australian Private Equity Venture Capital Association Conference on Thursday that from 2009 to 2010 about 150 Asian companies invested in Australia. For the same period, only 100 Australian firms made investments in Asia.

Most of the inflow of Asian money toward Australia ended up in the resource industry, food and beverage and financial services. Mr Takayanagi cited as example the recent buy-in by Chinese firm Cofco of the Tully sugar mill in north Queensland through Australian holding company, Bright Food. The same company is seeking to purchase another sugar mill at Proserpine in the same area.

For Australian firms seeking good investment opportunities in Asia, Mr Takayanagi recommended looking first into the growth prospects of a particular country and then zeroing in on a sector.

"When emerging countries are growing, you will generally find that the financial sector within these counties is growing at a faster rate than the overall economy," The Australian quoted Mr Takayanagi.

Venture capital firm SonarLogic recommended that Australian firms searching for business opportunities in Asia should look for companies that have distinct products that could not be easily copied.

"If you've got something where people can press a button and it's copied, that will happen. In our case, we worked out that the reverse engineering would require about 200 programmers, but we've got the core asset, which can be licenses for about $10 million," The Australian quoted SonartLogic Chief Executive of Technology Lloyd Ernst.

Despite the slowdown of the venture capital sector compared to a decade ago, this was made up by high net-worth individuals who provided capital for new Asian companies that needed funding below $5 million.

Private equity firms said in another investment conference in Hong Kong that Asian deals would go up in the next six to nine months as companies look for alternative sources of financial due to turmoil in the global markets and tighter credit. The companies identified Indonesia, China and Japan as the countries where the best deals would likely rise, particularly in consumer, real estate and healthcare.