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2021 Developed Europe, Emerging EMEA & UK Small & Mid-Cap Research
Results Live: 8 September 2021
2021 Developed Europe, Developed Europe Small & Mid-Cap & Emerging EMEA Executive Team
Results Live: 9 September 2021
Independent Data-driven Insights
For nearly 50 years, Institutional Investor has been conducting independent research surveys with global investment professionals who evaluate and determine the best performing sell side research providers and CEOs, CFOs, IROs and IR Programs across Europe, Emerging EMEA, Asia Pacific, North America and Latin America. The research data independently captures evaluations of companies, brokers and executives from investment managers, broker firms and corporate issuers, to deliver detailed peer-to-peer comparative analyses every year; the feedback helps inform strategic decision making and improve resource and process management.
II Research Mission: To be the leading provider of independent performance validation and a source of qualitative market intelligence for Corporates and Investment Professionals globally.
Research surveys are an independent platform for investment professionals to select the best-in-class of top sell-side research and provide valuable qualitative feedback on the provision, acquisition and consumption of research advisory services. The buy side’s assessment helps the sell side to optimise their service in a competitive market, manage their resources and ensure that they focus their efforts on the most profitable market segment.
Executive Team surveys are an independent platform for investment and sell-side professionals to evaluate credibility, communication, financial stewardship and capital allocation of corporate leadership, as well as IR effectiveness across multiple activities. The results from the survey, an in-depth perception and benchmark analysis (II Insights), capture the sentiment and trust level of stakeholders in their equity assets.
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Europe Research
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2021 Overview: More than a year and half since the Covid-19 pandemic plunged Europe into lockdown and ushered the equity research industry into a virtual environment, there are some changes on the near horizon.
The region’s vaccine effort — sluggish at first — has now reached 70 percent of adults in Europe, according to European Union officials, and the end of the summer signals a return to the office for many employees, despite the looming Delta variant.
This shift is poised to recalibrate the industry and its relationships once again — and finding the right balance for both research teams and their institutional investor clients will be key.
“If you look at the situation with clients, they face all of their normal challenges,” said Nick Webb, COO at Exane BNP Paribas. “They’ve got to protect their clients’ money and deliver performance, but they’ve got lots of extra obligations that have grown exponentially in recent years, in terms of monitoring sustainability of these investments. And they now have to layer on top of that, all these operational challenges that come from Covid and I think that’s a difficult challenge for them.”
Addressing that challenge remains at the forefront for Theepan Jothilingam, head of research at Exane BNP Paribas. “We’re going to have to work with our people and our clients to find the right balance, to find a way that works without sacrificing quality of service,” he said.
It also illuminates why Exane BNP Paribas is once again the No. 1 provider in Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-Europe Research Team...
Access Results Here: UK Small & Mid-Cap Research
2021 Overview: Investors ranked the United Kingdom’s top purveyors of insights on small- and mid-cap stocks in Institutional Investor’s 2021 U.K. Small & Mid-cap Research Team.
This is the second year the survey has been published under the II brand following the acquisition of Extel in 2018, and Peel Hunt was once again voted the No. 1 provider.
The specialist U.K. investment bank placed first, followed by Investec in second and Numis Securities in third, in a year where developed European markets bounced back thanks to a huge amount of liquidity from central banks.
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The Emerging EMEA Research
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
2021 Overview: The future of equity research in emerging markets is hybrid — according to the EMEA region’s top brokers.
After a year and a half of supporting investors virtually in the developing markets of Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and South Africa, equity research providers are starting to transition their analysts — and client relationships — back to the office as volatility in the region continues.
“The hybrid strategy for client interactions will continue to be a necessity,” according to Sophie Warrick, head of EMEA Equity Research at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“It has been really pleasing to see the level of virtual connectivity with clients in different regions, which have exceeded the level which took place historically via physical marketing,” she said. “In this sense Covid-19 brought us closer to our clients; adding back in-person interactions is something we are all looking forward to, but the space between physical trips will be filled with more client engagement than before.”
Clients clearly felt the same way…
Esther Weisz, Sales Director (Americas): eweisz@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The Latin America Research Team
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
2020 Overview: No matter which way you slice it, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is Latin America’s top research provider.
Investment professionals voted for JPMorgan as the region’s No. 1 research firm in Institutional Investor’s 28th annual Latin America Research Team survey. BTG Pactual slipped to second place in the 2020 ranking of research teams, while Bank of America Securities improved one position to clinch third.
More than 600 investment professionals at 400 asset management firms with major Latin American holdings participated in the survey, rating research providers across 23 industries, regions, and economic sectors. Each vote was weighted based on how much respondents spent on sell-side research.
This year’s survey produced three additional leaderboards, including two rankings weighted by voter assets under management. No matter how the results were calculated, however, JPMorgan took the top spot, followed by BTG Pactual in second and BofA Securities in third.
Access Results Here: The All-Brazil Research Team
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
2020 Overview: JPMorgan Chase & Co is the No. 1 firm in Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-Brazil Research Team.
The 17th annual ranking of Brazil’s best equity research teams was determined by nearly 470 investment professionals across 316 asset management firms with significant Latin American holdings. Respondents rated research teams across 17 industry and economic sectors, with their votes weighted by how much they spent on sell-side research.
In this year’s commission-weighted ranking, JPMorgan just edged out last year’s incumbent BTG Pactual, earning 17 total team positions to the Brazilian bank’s 16.
Bradesco BBI tied with BTG Pactual for second, while Credit Suisse dropped one spot to fourth place. BofA Securities and UBS tied for fifth place with 7 positions each.
When votes were weighted based on assets under management instead of commissions, JPMorgan and BTG Pactual tied for first place, while Bradesco BBI took third.
Investors also voted for their favorite analysts to form two additional leaderboards based on individual researchers. In the commission-weighted ranking, BTG Pactual continued its reign, breaking last year’s two-way tie with Bradesco BBI to keep the No. 1 spot. Bradesco BBI and JPMorgan tied for second. These results did not change when votes were weighted by assets under management.
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Asia Research Team
Click here to read our 2021 Research Methodology
Click here to read our 2021 Trading & Execution Methodology
2021 Overview:
Nearly a year and a half after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, one word has best summed up the equity markets of Asia: resiliency.
“Since June, markets across Asia have proved resilient to swings in capital flows and have taken an especially long‐term focus, not just looking through Covid‐related challenges but also anticipating secular change in themes such as decarbonization and the impact of digital technologies across industries,” according to William Greene, head of Asia research at Morgan Stanley.
After a period of substantial uncertainty, the markets surprised everyone with the sustained bounce seen over the course of 2020 and into 2021, with indices up more than 30 percent year-over-year, and up 60 to 80 percent from the lows, according to Martin Yule, head of Asia-Pacific research at UBS.
“Perhaps more illustrative is the 20 to 30 percent move of most Asia indices from pre-Covid levels, despite the economic headwinds created by the virus,” he added. “Accommodative monetary policy is a major influence, but so is the belief that vaccinations will quickly return life to normal. Suffice it to say, the world was at a far more optimistic point for this year’s survey than it was last year.”
It would appear that this staying power applies to the region’s top equity research providers as well, according to Institutional Investor’s 28th annual All-Asia Research Team.
Access Results Here: The All-Japan Research Team
Click here to read our Research Methodology
Click here to read our 2021 Press Release in English
Click here to read our 2021 Press Release in Japanese
2021 Overview: 2020 had an inauspicious, if not unexpected, start for the world’s third-largest economy.
For the first time since 2015 — and as predicted by the country’s top research firms last year — Japan slipped into a recession during the first three months of 2020, ushered in by an increased consumption tax, natural disasters, and trade troubles with China.
But as the country moved from a “gentle recession” into a “technical recession” marked by two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the worst was yet to come as the novel coronavirus swept the globe and upended every aspect of life in Japan.
By the end of the summer, the economy had recorded its worst contraction on record of almost 8 percent, even as the country contained the Covid-19 pandemic better than its Western counterparts.
“The health impact of [Covid-19] for Japan [has been] mild so far,” said Takaaki Muramatsu, director of research at SMBC Nikko Securities. “It has forced companies to become more efficient and has given a big kick start to the digital transformation of almost every part of Japanese life. This process will be central to Japan’s new normal.”
To help them navigate this “new normal,” investors have once again turned to a cadre of Japanese-based research firms, based on the results of Institutional Investor’s 28th annual All-Japan Research Team.
Access Results Here: The All-China Research Team
Esther Weisz, Sales Director (Americas): eweisz@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-America Research Team
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
Click here to read our 2021 Trading & Execution Methodology
2020 Overview: It’s March 12, 2020. The president has just banned travel from Europe. Stocks are in free fall. There’s a constant churn of breaking news alerts as something else shuts down: Broadway. Schools. Major League Baseball.
In makeshift home offices in New York and across the country, Wall Street’s analysts are scrambling to answer the question that every investor is asking: What happens next?
And in the middle of a crisis, new stars were born.
The 49th annual All-America Research Team celebrates the analysts and research providers that have risen to the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. These are the experts investors turned to when entire industries shuttered overnight, even as companies themselves stopped trying to forecast their uncertain financial futures...
Access Results Here: The All-Canada Research Team
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
2020 Overview: Nearly everything else in the world has changed — but the top research team in Canada hasn’t.
RBC Capital Markets has again topped Institutional Investor’s All-Canada Research Team in the second annual ranking of the country’s top equity research firms.
The results were decided by directors of research and heads of investment at institutions with major securities holdings in Canada, who rated the country’s top research providers across 16 market sectors. Their votes were weighted by commission spending to produce a top-10 leaderboard of Canadian equity research firms.
Despite a year of upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the top five results mirrored the inaugural 2019 ranking...
Ursula Kizy, Sales Director (Americas): ukizy@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-America Executive Team
Click here to read our Methodology
2021 Overview: It’s been a bad year for the hospitality business. For the past eight months, hotels have suffered low revenues and high vacancies as the coronavirus pandemic eliminated business travel and halted most tourism. Many hotels shut down — temporarily or permanently. In New York City, some empty hotels were converted into medical staff housing or homeless shelters. Despite these challenges, one major hotel chain’s executives have managed to impress institutional investors through their handling of the Covid-19 crisis. Hilton Worldwide Holdings was among the best-performing companies in this year’s All-America Executive Team, with the Hilton c-suite scoring first place in the gaming and lodging sector. It’s a step up for Hilton, which last year ranked second overall in its sector, behind Marriott International. Other c-suites also prevailed through an immensely challenging year for their industries...Click here to continue reading.
Access Results Here: The All-Canada Executive Team
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2021 Overview: In a turbulent year dominated by an unprecedented health crisis, top-ranking chief executives across Canada have taken decisive action to protect their staff, support their customers, and — in the most hard-hit industries — keep their businesses alive.
“The dreams, plans, and hard work of so many have been undermined by the global pandemic,” said David McKay, CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, who observed how devastating this past year has been for so many families and businesses: “The sudden loss of loved ones. The loss of jobs and small businesses. Missing out on the valuable experiences of a normal school year.”
When Covid-19 hit, McKay acted quickly, temporarily closing hundreds of RBC branches and enabling nearly 90 percent of employees — more than 75,000 across 36 countries — to work from home. The CEO was rewarded for his response to the pandemic by buy-side analysts, money managers, and sell-side researchers at securities firms and financial institutions, who ranked McKay first among chief executives in the financial institution sector in Institutional Investor’s sophomore All-Canada Executive Team.
Elsewhere, the sudden drop in customers as people retrenched indoors forced what Air Canada chief Calin Rovinescu described as “the most painful decision of my career”: laying off half of the airline’s workforce. “Given the disappearance of more than 90 percent of our business, we regrettably had to retrench and downsize,” he said.
In the face of great challenges, all of Institutional Investor’s top ranking CEOs embraced innovation...
Amani Korayeim, Sales Director (Europe & Emerging EMEA): amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Emerging EMEA Executive Team
2021 Overview: A refugee crisis following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan could derail a bumper year for Turkey’s Coca Cola Icetek, according to its chief executive Burak Basarir.
Basarir is among the top-scoring chief executives in Institutional Investor’s Emerging EMEA Executive Team, as voted for by over 1,500 buy- and sell-side professionals. The recognition comes as Coca Cola Icetek is expanding in Central Asia after completing a two-year negotiation to acquire the majority stake in the Coca-Cola bottler in Uzbekistan. At the same time, Basarir has one eye on the movement of refugees around the region. “We are following closely the political instability in Afghanistan and the refugee movements across our key markets such as Pakistan and Turkey,” he said.
It’s the closing of borders — and access to markets — that keeps Grigory Vitalyevich Fedorishin from Russia’s largest steelmaker Novolipetsk Steel awake at night. “We are witnessing a surge in protectionism and a trend towards further market regionalization,” said Fedorishin, II’s top-scoring chief executive in the metals and mining sector. “Key global economies will continue to defend their positions and internal markets. This could translate into additional barriers, or into more complex trading conditions among countries.” Nonetheless, Fedorishin said, NLMK has been working to insulate its supply chains against unexpected disruptions for some time. “We were able to quickly adapt” when the pandemic hit, he said, noting that the firm entered alternative sales markets and earned the trust of new customers when traditional business stalled.
At TCS Group Holding, a banking group domiciled in Cyprus and operating in Russia as Tinkoff, Russia’s isolated position on the world stage means it is somewhat insulated from geopolitics, according to chief executive Oliver Hughes. Nonetheless, Hughes, who was the highest ranking chief executive in the financial sector, said Tinkoff is growing faster than the competition. Now the firm faces two challenges: how to scale up quickly while maintaining the quality of its service and where to find the tech talent that it needs to grow its platform. Both will depend on the stability of the market.
“Hopefully we will have an uneventful 2022,” he said.
Amani Korayeim, Sales Director (Europe & Emerging EMEA): amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Europe Executive Team
2021 Overivew: As the world slowly begins to shake off the unprecedented effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, corporate executives around the globe have been forced to grapple with challenges that even the most forward-thinking business leaders couldn’t have imagined just two short years ago. For many of the top-scoring chief executives in Institutional Investor’s 2021 All-Europe Executive Team, supply-chain issues top the list.
“Supply chains around the world are in significant disarray,” said Nestlé’s Ulf Mark Schneider, the top-ranked chief executive in the food sector. “The consequences are rising raw material and freight costs.” Schneider said that the secret to overcoming these issues — and coping with an uncertain geopolitical environment — lies in increased agility and flexibility. For him, that’s not about knowing all the answers, but knowing he can delegate decisions to those who do: “We rely strongly on our people in the markets to know the best way to deliver for consumers, the company and society.”
The pandemic has also heralded a kinder way of doing business for this year’s top-scoring chief executives. “Leaders need to be empathetic, agile and lead with integrity,” said Capgemini’s Aiman Ezzat, the top scoring chief executive in the software technology sector. “The experiences of the last 18 months have brought this into sharp focus for me.”
At Anglo American, Mark Cutifani, the top scoring chief executive in metals and mining, said that the coronavirus forced firms to reassess their goals and values. “Companies had to demonstrate that they were really there for their communities when they needed them the most,” he said. “I’m proud of how Anglo American rose to the challenge.” Cutifani took the “tough but necessary” decision to close mines at the start of the pandemic. Even during the closures, Anglo American guaranteed salaries for its employees in South Africa, as well as housing allowances and company contributions to medical and pensions funds. “Being a partner to our local communities is much more than simply providing employment opportunities,” he said.
Several chief executives said they see the pandemic as a test case for further interruptions on the horizon. “We continue to expect an elevated level of geopolitical volatility,” said Nestlé’s Schneider. Faury agreed. While production at Airbus is down, the company is ramping up its resilience for future shocks. “We learned a lot from this crisis,” he said, “and we concluded that maintaining the status quo cannot be an option.”
Ursula Kizy, Sales Director (Americas): ukizy@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The Latin America Executive Team
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
2021 Overview: It was a tale of two pandemics for the top-scoring chief executives on Institutional Investor’s 2021 Latin American Executive Team.
Leaders in investment management and chemical manufacturing scrambled to cope with unprecedented demand for products, ranging from digital financial platforms to recycled plastics for water bottles, food packaging, clothes, automotive components, and construction materials. It was quite a different story for owners of bricks and mortar assets with no option but to close.
“Our greatest challenge this year might surprise you,” said Alpek’s José de Jesús Valdez, the second-highest scoring chief executive in the oil, gas, and petrochemicals category. “Demand for our products has sharply increased, outpacing domestic supply in the Americas.”
Meanwhile the last 12 months have mostly been about survival, not expansion, at Aliansce Sonae, the second-largest shopping mall developer in Brazil. Chief executive Rafael Sales, the top-scoring CEO in the real estate category, said 2020 brought with it his toughest decision yet: to close the company’s malls and offices.
Stepping aside was the toughest business decision Guilherme Benchimol of the Brazilian investment management company XP Inc made in the last year. After 20 years as chief executive, he has become executive chairman, nominating Thiago Maffra as his successor. He knew it was the right thing, he told II, but that didn’t make it easier. “XP has been my life since I founded it in 2001,” he said. “It took me long hours of thoughts and conversations in order to make the final decision.”
But he leaves on a high. After leading XP through its public offering in December 2019, Benchimol was forced to rapidly expand XP’s capacity as the company, which provides low-fee financial products and services, faced an unprecedented increase in trading volumes across its platforms at the start of the pandemic.
As he leaves the chief executive post, Benchimol is in a reflective mood. The most important lesson he learned in his business career? Sharing his dream with people who got it — and stuck with him for the duration. “Much of XP’s success to date was achieved due to the partnership model,” he said. “That empowers employees and makes them real owners and CEOs of the company.”
Carvin Lee, Commerical Lead (Asia): carvin.lee@institutionalinvestor.com
Michael Clemons, Sales Director (Japan): michael.clemons@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Asia Executive Team
2021 Overview: If the summer of 2020 had Asia’s top executives fretting over a second surge in coronavirus cases, in 2021 their thoughts are turning to the post-pandemic world on the horizon.
XiaoHai Hou — the top scoring CEO in the consumer and staples category of Institutional Investor’s 2021 All-Asia Executive Team — is wondering how to grasp the challenges and opportunities posed by an explosion in demand for craft beer in China.
In the telecommunications sector, Xiaochu Wang from China Unicom is celebrating 11 consecutive years as the top-rated chief executive in II’s poll, meaning he has an unbroken run at the top spot since the rankings launched.
And C.C. Wei, CEO at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and the highest scoring chief executive in the technology and semiconductor category, is grappling with difficult decisions, as the pandemic caused a shortage of semiconductors used in cars and computers
“Keeping up with changing and increasing customer demand has been a challenge this year,” he said. “It might be an understatement to say that the peaks and troughs of semiconductor demand were more turbulent than we would normally expect.”
Access Results Here: The All-Japan Executive Team
Click to read our 2021 Press Release in English
Click to read our 2021 Press Release in Japanese
2021 Overview: Constant evolution in the face of challenges is what unites the top-scoring chief executives in Institutional Investor’s 2021 All-Japan Executive Team. Shigenobu Nagamori, chairman and chief executive of Nidec Corp., quotes Nietzsche: “The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.”
Nagamori is once again the top-scoring chief executive in the electronic components sector for his work at Nidec, the company he founded in a prefabricated hut along the Katsura River in Kyoto in 1973. For more than 10 years, he has been searching for a successor for his business. But few hopefuls can match his resolve: After his father passed away when he was a child, Nagamori’s mother, a farmer, told him that as long as he put in twice as much effort as others, he would succeed in his endeavors.
He may be getting closer to handing over the reins after Nidec promoted Jun Seki to the role of president and chief operating officer in April 2020. Seki was the third outside executive Nagamori had recruited as a potential candidate for president. Nagamori told II that his promotion marks an end to a more non-hierarchical management structure and a return to a top-down approach as the company aims at consolidated net sales of 10 trillion yen by the financial year ending March 31, 2031.
Yasuhiko Saitoh knows well the trials of taking on a business that has been steered by the same leadership for decades. Saitoh became president of Shin-Etsu Chemical in 2016, with the tricky task of helping the company transition from the leadership of chairman Chihiro Kanagawa, who is in his nineties. The laconic executive said the most important lesson he has learned in business is “to keep learning – and that there is no end of learning.” He achieves this partly through collaboration with external partners, a strategy shared by Christophe Weber, president and chief executive at Takeda.
“If the global Covid-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s that speed in R&D can be achieved through effective collaboration and partnerships,” Weber said.
Ursula Kizy, Sales Director (Americas): ukizy@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: America's Top Corporate Access Providers:
Amani Korayeim, Sales Director (Europe & Emerging EMEA): amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Emerging EMEA Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: Emerging market analysts are used to unpredictability. But 2020 has been something else entirely.
As Covid-19 began to spread around the world, forcing countries into lockdown and sending entire workforces home, top brokers observed a sudden increase in demand from investors for research, corporate access — for everything, according to Camille Asmar, HSBC’s head of emerging market equity sales for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
“At the beginning, clients wanted access to everything and wanted to know everything,” he said. “We were here to support them and guide them throughout the pandemic and volatile markets.”
For investors in the developing markets of Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and South Africa, HSBC was particularly well suited to guide them, having long focused primarily on emerging markets. On the research team, for example, every analyst has more than 15 years of experience covering predominantly emerging markets, according to Raj Sinah, head of research for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
“In emerging markets we are used to volatile moves and waves, so for us as a combined team — sales, research, and corporate access, which have worked together for over a decade — we were used to navigating situations such as this one,” Asmar said. “We were in a position stronger than anyone else to be there for our clients.”
The clients seem to agree: HSBC was among the top-performing firms in Institutional Investor’s Emerging EMEA survey, which asked investors to rate the region’s research purveyors, sales teams, and corporate access providers. The London-based bank was joined in the top rungs by global firms like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and UBS Group.
Amani Korayeim, Sales Director (Europe & Emerging EMEA): amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Europe's Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: “When volatility and uncertainty are high, that’s when investors need a top-quality, experienced research team to navigate a landscape that’s been very dynamic almost day-to-day,” says Theepan Jothilingam, head of research at Exane BNP Paribas.
This includes a high-quality corporate access program.
“Clients wanted greater access to corporates so they could take a real-time pulse on what companies are seeing,” says Paul Reynolds, Exane BNPP’s head of advisory. “That in turn required corporate access teams to be very responsive not just in terms of getting a number of clients connected but also changing the business model in the sense that you’re offering a virtual service now.”
Investors seem to have appreciated Exane BNPP’s efforts: The bank came second this year’s ranking of Europe’s Top Corporate Access Providers, behind first-place provider Kepler Cheuvreux.
Access Results Here: UK Small & Midcap Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: Formerly known as Extel’s U.K. Small & Mid-cap Survey, the small- and mid-cap results are the first Extel rankings to be published under the Institutional Investor brand this year, following II’s acquisition of Extel in 2018. Instead of ranking the best overall brokers, as in previous Extel surveys, this new version highlights the top firms across three categories: research, sales, corporate access.
The ranking of U.K. Small & Mid-cap Corporate Access Providers was topped by Peel Hunt, with Investec coming in second and Numis taking third.
The survey, which included 293 portfolio managers and analysts across 203 firms, took place during the early weeks of the pandemic, with polling closing on April 17. This makes it one of the first to capture investor sentiment toward their corporate access providers during the height of 2020’s uncertainty.
“Corporate access has absolutely gone online,” said Andrew Peck, head of Investec’s listed client group. Despite this shift, Investec has seen “an enormous amount of contact between fund managers and analysts and companies.”
“More contact between the buy side and the sell side than I’ve ever known,” Peck added.
Carvin Lee, Commerical Lead (Asia): carvin.lee@institutionalinvestor.com
Michael Clemons, Sales Director (Japan): michael.clemons@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Asia's Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: When Covid-19 sent China — and then the rest of Asia — into lockdown, JPMorgan Chase & Co. was one of the first to make the switch to virtual corporate access.
“I believe we probably held the first virtual event globally,” said Ryan Holsheimer, the bank’s Asia Pacific head of cash equities and equity distribution. “We had a conference in Shenzhen in February, right as things were starting to get cancelled and travel plans were thrown into disarray. We quickly moved the conference from physical to virtual, and we had 200 investors attend that virtually.”
Since then, everything has gone virtual — a new normal that Holsheimer and other corporate access leaders expect to last at least through the end of this year, if not longer. According to Holsheimer, JPMorgan has moved all of its conferences for the rest of the year online, while adding conference calls and other virtual meetings to meet a surge in demand from investors who are tuning in by the thousands.
This readiness to quickly adapt seems to be paying off, at least according to Institutional Investor’s 2020 ranking of Asia’s Top Corporate Access Providers.
Access Results Here: Japan's Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: Investors have chosen Nomura as the Japan’s top corporate access provider, rating the Japanese bank highly for its logistics and one-on-one meetings, among other attributes.
Daiwa Securities Group was ranked second by buy-side voters, followed by SMBC Nikko Securities in third.
Corporate respondents, however, chose Daiwa as 2020’s top access facilitator, based on investor introductions, site visits, conferences, non-deal roadshows, and feedback. Nomura came in second among corporations, while Mizuho Securities placed third.
About 142 investors and 52 corporate representatives voted to determine Institutional Investor’s 2020 ranking of Japan’s Top Corporate Access Providers.
Access Results Here: China's Top Corporate Access Providers
Ursula Kizy, Sales Director (Americas): ukizy@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Latin America's Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: Latin American corporate access — like everything else touched by the coronavirus pandemic — has moved entirely online. But while the business of connecting investors and companies looks very different in 2020, the region’s top provider hasn’t changed.
BTG Pactual once again ranked first among money managers and corporate respondents in Institutional Investor’s 2020 ranking of Latin America’s Top Corporate Access Providers. Nearly 200 investors and 130 corporate representatives voted in this year’s survey to determine the firms that provide the best corporate access in Latin America.
Corporate voters showed a stronger preference for local firms...
Esther Weisz, Sales Director (Americas): eweisz@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-America Sales Team
2020 Overview: It has been a year in which investors have needed the support of the sell side’s sales teams — and one firm has differentiated itself as the best in client service. Morgan Stanley has definitively risen to the top of Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-America Sales Team, which recognizes the firms with the best sales professionals. This year the bank repeated its first-place finish in specialist sales and claimed No. 1 in the generalist sales category, bumping JPMorgan Chase & Co. into second place. While much of last year was spent digesting regulation like the European Union’s updated markets in financial instruments directive — which unbundled research dollars from trading in January 2018, transforming client relationships — this year’s sales teams were focused on delivering the best possible service amid the global pandemic caused by the coronavirus...
Esther Weisz, Sales Director (Americas): eweisz@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The Latin America Sales Team
2020 Overview: JPMorgan Chase & Co. has defended its crown in Latin America sales.
The global firm was named the No. 1 provider in Institutional Investor’s 2020 Latin America Sales Team, prevailing once again over a number of domestic firms.
In another repeat of last year, Brazilian bank BTG Pactual maintained its second place finish — but there is where the consistency ends in 2020’s commission-weighted leaderboard.
Credit Suisse rose two spots to take third, while Santander rocketed from tenth place to No. 4. BofA Securities rounded out the top five this year, after placing eighth in 2019.
When votes were weighted by respondent assets under management, the top two spots still went to JPMorgan and BTG Pactual, in that order. However, Santander and Credit Suisse switched positions, and Morgan Stanley claimed fifth place instead of BofA.
Access Results Here: The All-Brazil Sales Team
2020 Overview: BTG Pactual is once again No. 1 in Brazil sales.
After reclaiming the crown last year, the Brazilian bank has defended its title against global and domestic competitors in Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-Brazil Sales Team.
Local bank Bradesco BBI placed second in the annual ranking of generalist sales teams, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped to third. Itaú BBA and Santander took fourth and fifth, respectively. The results were decided by some 240 buy-side money managers at more than 180 firms with major holdings in Latin America.
While the main leaderboard was weighted by how much voters spent on sell-side commissions, II also produced a set of results weighted by assets under management. BTG Pactual topped these as well, followed by Bradesco BBI in second, JPMorgan in third, and Santander in fourth. Itaú BBA rounded out the top five.
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The Emerging EMEA Sales Team
2020 Overview: Emerging market analysts are used to unpredictability. But 2020 has been something else entirely.
As Covid-19 began to spread around the world, forcing countries into lockdown and sending entire workforces home, top brokers observed a sudden increase in demand from investors for research, corporate access — for everything, according to Camille Asmar, HSBC’s head of emerging market equity sales for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
“At the beginning, clients wanted access to everything and wanted to know everything,” he said. “We were here to support them and guide them throughout the pandemic and volatile markets.”
For investors in the developing markets of Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and South Africa, HSBC was particularly well suited to guide them, having long focused primarily on emerging markets. On the research team, for example, every analyst has more than 15 years of experience covering predominantly emerging markets, according to Raj Sinah, head of research for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
“In emerging markets we are used to volatile moves and waves, so for us as a combined team — sales, research, and corporate access, which have worked together for over a decade — we were used to navigating situations such as this one,” Asmar said. “We were in a position stronger than anyone else to be there for our clients.”
The clients seem to agree: HSBC was among the top-performing firms in Institutional Investor’s Emerging EMEA survey, which asked investors to rate the region’s research purveyors, sales teams, and corporate access providers. The London-based bank was joined in the top rungs by global firms like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and UBS Group.
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Europe Sales Team
2020 Overview: “When volatility and uncertainty are high, that’s when investors need a top-quality, experienced research team to navigate a landscape that’s been very dynamic almost day-to-day,” says Theepan Jothilingam, head of research at Exane BNP Paribas.
A talented sales team also helps.
Sales teams are “incredibly important to clients in terms of filtering what’s important,” according to Paul Reynolds, Exane BNPP’s head of advisory.
“The time that clients have spent with sales teams is higher than any point in the last year,” he says.
Investors seem to have appreciated Exane BNPP’s efforts: The bank came first in the 2020 All-Europe Sales Team, followed by Kepler Cheuvreux in second place.
2020 Overview: Formerly known as Extel’s U.K. Small & Mid-cap Survey, the small- and mid-cap results are the first Extel rankings to be published under the Institutional Investor brand this year, following II’s acquisition of Extel in 2018. Instead of ranking the best overall brokers, as in previous Extel surveys, this new version highlights the top firms across three categories: research, sales, corporate access.
The U.K. Small & Mid-cap Sales Team was topped by Numis Securities, followed by Investec in second and Peel Hunt in third.
The survey, which included 293 portfolio managers and analysts across 203 firms, took place during the early weeks of the pandemic, with polling closing on April 17. This makes it one of the first to capture investor sentiment toward their brokers during the height of 2020’s uncertainty.
“The future is always uncertain — now more than usual,” said Will Wallis, head of research at Numis, by phone. “Analysts who know businesses well have been able to help institutional investors frame their thinking. While it doesn’t mean we have a crystal ball, if you have a deep understanding you are in a better position to make some judgment calls on what may or may not happen.”
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Asia Sales Team
2020 Overview: Amid unprecedented times, a new firm has taken the crown in Asia equity sales.
Some 1,200 money managers elevated UBS from last year’s second place finish to No. 1 in Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-Asia Sales Team, based on its sales coverage across 12 Asian countries. Respondents were asked to rate sales teams on six attributes, including their ability to add to value to research, generate ideas, and provide a global context. In a decisive performance, UBS ranked first in every attribute.
After 2019’s debut in the pole position, Citigroup was bumped to second, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. improved three spots to take third place. Morgan Stanley slid one spot to fourth, and BofA Securities moved up a rung to crack the top five.
The shakeup mirrors the upheaval experienced in most of Asia over the last year. While U.S.-China trade tensions dominated the markets in 2019, these were summarily replaced in early 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic that engulfed the region and then the globe.
Access Results Here: The All-Japan Sales Team
2020 Overview: For the third consecutive year, Nomura has topped Institutional Investor’s All-Japan Sales Team in a decisive ranking by buy-side money managers.
Daiwa Securities Group placed second, improving on 2019’s fourth place finish in the commission-weighted ranking. SMBC Nikko Securities and Mizuho Securities fell one spot each to place third and fourth, respectively. The highest rated international provider was JPMorgan Chase & Co., which rose from seventh place to crack the top five.
More than 380 investors from 227 firms were asked to consider six attributes when rating Japanese sales teams: understanding of client needs; idea generation; service and responsiveness; global context; value added to research; and market knowledge and feel. Their responses were then weighted based on how much their firms spend on commissions.
A separate ranking of equity sales teams, created by weighting survey responses by assets under management, produced an identical top five.
Access Results Here: The All-China Sales Team
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Europe Research
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
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2021 Overview: More than a year and half since the Covid-19 pandemic plunged Europe into lockdown and ushered the equity research industry into a virtual environment, there are some changes on the near horizon.
The region’s vaccine effort — sluggish at first — has now reached 70 percent of adults in Europe, according to European Union officials, and the end of the summer signals a return to the office for many employees, despite the looming Delta variant.
This shift is poised to recalibrate the industry and its relationships once again — and finding the right balance for both research teams and their institutional investor clients will be key.
“If you look at the situation with clients, they face all of their normal challenges,” said Nick Webb, COO at Exane BNP Paribas. “They’ve got to protect their clients’ money and deliver performance, but they’ve got lots of extra obligations that have grown exponentially in recent years, in terms of monitoring sustainability of these investments. And they now have to layer on top of that, all these operational challenges that come from Covid and I think that’s a difficult challenge for them.”
Addressing that challenge remains at the forefront for Theepan Jothilingam, head of research at Exane BNP Paribas. “We’re going to have to work with our people and our clients to find the right balance, to find a way that works without sacrificing quality of service,” he said.
It also illuminates why Exane BNP Paribas is once again the No. 1 provider in Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-Europe Research Team...
Access Results Here: UK Small & Mid-Cap Research
2021 Overview: Investors ranked the United Kingdom’s top purveyors of insights on small- and mid-cap stocks in Institutional Investor’s 2021 U.K. Small & Mid-cap Research Team.
This is the second year the survey has been published under the II brand following the acquisition of Extel in 2018, and Peel Hunt was once again voted the No. 1 provider.
The specialist U.K. investment bank placed first, followed by Investec in second and Numis Securities in third, in a year where developed European markets bounced back thanks to a huge amount of liquidity from central banks.
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The Emerging EMEA Research
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
2021 Overview: The future of equity research in emerging markets is hybrid — according to the EMEA region’s top brokers.
After a year and a half of supporting investors virtually in the developing markets of Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and South Africa, equity research providers are starting to transition their analysts — and client relationships — back to the office as volatility in the region continues.
“The hybrid strategy for client interactions will continue to be a necessity,” according to Sophie Warrick, head of EMEA Equity Research at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“It has been really pleasing to see the level of virtual connectivity with clients in different regions, which have exceeded the level which took place historically via physical marketing,” she said. “In this sense Covid-19 brought us closer to our clients; adding back in-person interactions is something we are all looking forward to, but the space between physical trips will be filled with more client engagement than before.”
Clients clearly felt the same way…
Esther Weisz, Sales Director (Americas): eweisz@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The Latin America Research Team
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
2020 Overview: No matter which way you slice it, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is Latin America’s top research provider.
Investment professionals voted for JPMorgan as the region’s No. 1 research firm in Institutional Investor’s 28th annual Latin America Research Team survey. BTG Pactual slipped to second place in the 2020 ranking of research teams, while Bank of America Securities improved one position to clinch third.
More than 600 investment professionals at 400 asset management firms with major Latin American holdings participated in the survey, rating research providers across 23 industries, regions, and economic sectors. Each vote was weighted based on how much respondents spent on sell-side research.
This year’s survey produced three additional leaderboards, including two rankings weighted by voter assets under management. No matter how the results were calculated, however, JPMorgan took the top spot, followed by BTG Pactual in second and BofA Securities in third.
Access Results Here: The All-Brazil Research Team
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
2020 Overview: JPMorgan Chase & Co is the No. 1 firm in Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-Brazil Research Team.
The 17th annual ranking of Brazil’s best equity research teams was determined by nearly 470 investment professionals across 316 asset management firms with significant Latin American holdings. Respondents rated research teams across 17 industry and economic sectors, with their votes weighted by how much they spent on sell-side research.
In this year’s commission-weighted ranking, JPMorgan just edged out last year’s incumbent BTG Pactual, earning 17 total team positions to the Brazilian bank’s 16.
Bradesco BBI tied with BTG Pactual for second, while Credit Suisse dropped one spot to fourth place. BofA Securities and UBS tied for fifth place with 7 positions each.
When votes were weighted based on assets under management instead of commissions, JPMorgan and BTG Pactual tied for first place, while Bradesco BBI took third.
Investors also voted for their favorite analysts to form two additional leaderboards based on individual researchers. In the commission-weighted ranking, BTG Pactual continued its reign, breaking last year’s two-way tie with Bradesco BBI to keep the No. 1 spot. Bradesco BBI and JPMorgan tied for second. These results did not change when votes were weighted by assets under management.
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Asia Research Team
Click here to read our 2021 Research Methodology
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2021 Overview:
Nearly a year and a half after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, one word has best summed up the equity markets of Asia: resiliency.
“Since June, markets across Asia have proved resilient to swings in capital flows and have taken an especially long‐term focus, not just looking through Covid‐related challenges but also anticipating secular change in themes such as decarbonization and the impact of digital technologies across industries,” according to William Greene, head of Asia research at Morgan Stanley.
After a period of substantial uncertainty, the markets surprised everyone with the sustained bounce seen over the course of 2020 and into 2021, with indices up more than 30 percent year-over-year, and up 60 to 80 percent from the lows, according to Martin Yule, head of Asia-Pacific research at UBS.
“Perhaps more illustrative is the 20 to 30 percent move of most Asia indices from pre-Covid levels, despite the economic headwinds created by the virus,” he added. “Accommodative monetary policy is a major influence, but so is the belief that vaccinations will quickly return life to normal. Suffice it to say, the world was at a far more optimistic point for this year’s survey than it was last year.”
It would appear that this staying power applies to the region’s top equity research providers as well, according to Institutional Investor’s 28th annual All-Asia Research Team.
Access Results Here: The All-Japan Research Team
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2021 Overview: 2020 had an inauspicious, if not unexpected, start for the world’s third-largest economy.
For the first time since 2015 — and as predicted by the country’s top research firms last year — Japan slipped into a recession during the first three months of 2020, ushered in by an increased consumption tax, natural disasters, and trade troubles with China.
But as the country moved from a “gentle recession” into a “technical recession” marked by two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the worst was yet to come as the novel coronavirus swept the globe and upended every aspect of life in Japan.
By the end of the summer, the economy had recorded its worst contraction on record of almost 8 percent, even as the country contained the Covid-19 pandemic better than its Western counterparts.
“The health impact of [Covid-19] for Japan [has been] mild so far,” said Takaaki Muramatsu, director of research at SMBC Nikko Securities. “It has forced companies to become more efficient and has given a big kick start to the digital transformation of almost every part of Japanese life. This process will be central to Japan’s new normal.”
To help them navigate this “new normal,” investors have once again turned to a cadre of Japanese-based research firms, based on the results of Institutional Investor’s 28th annual All-Japan Research Team.
Access Results Here: The All-China Research Team
Esther Weisz, Sales Director (Americas): eweisz@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-America Research Team
Click here to read our 2021 Methodology
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2020 Overview: It’s March 12, 2020. The president has just banned travel from Europe. Stocks are in free fall. There’s a constant churn of breaking news alerts as something else shuts down: Broadway. Schools. Major League Baseball.
In makeshift home offices in New York and across the country, Wall Street’s analysts are scrambling to answer the question that every investor is asking: What happens next?
And in the middle of a crisis, new stars were born.
The 49th annual All-America Research Team celebrates the analysts and research providers that have risen to the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. These are the experts investors turned to when entire industries shuttered overnight, even as companies themselves stopped trying to forecast their uncertain financial futures...
Access Results Here: The All-Canada Research Team
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2020 Overview: Nearly everything else in the world has changed — but the top research team in Canada hasn’t.
RBC Capital Markets has again topped Institutional Investor’s All-Canada Research Team in the second annual ranking of the country’s top equity research firms.
The results were decided by directors of research and heads of investment at institutions with major securities holdings in Canada, who rated the country’s top research providers across 16 market sectors. Their votes were weighted by commission spending to produce a top-10 leaderboard of Canadian equity research firms.
Despite a year of upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the top five results mirrored the inaugural 2019 ranking...
Ursula Kizy, Sales Director (Americas): ukizy@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-America Executive Team
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2021 Overview: It’s been a bad year for the hospitality business. For the past eight months, hotels have suffered low revenues and high vacancies as the coronavirus pandemic eliminated business travel and halted most tourism. Many hotels shut down — temporarily or permanently. In New York City, some empty hotels were converted into medical staff housing or homeless shelters. Despite these challenges, one major hotel chain’s executives have managed to impress institutional investors through their handling of the Covid-19 crisis. Hilton Worldwide Holdings was among the best-performing companies in this year’s All-America Executive Team, with the Hilton c-suite scoring first place in the gaming and lodging sector. It’s a step up for Hilton, which last year ranked second overall in its sector, behind Marriott International. Other c-suites also prevailed through an immensely challenging year for their industries...Click here to continue reading.
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2021 Overview: In a turbulent year dominated by an unprecedented health crisis, top-ranking chief executives across Canada have taken decisive action to protect their staff, support their customers, and — in the most hard-hit industries — keep their businesses alive.
“The dreams, plans, and hard work of so many have been undermined by the global pandemic,” said David McKay, CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, who observed how devastating this past year has been for so many families and businesses: “The sudden loss of loved ones. The loss of jobs and small businesses. Missing out on the valuable experiences of a normal school year.”
When Covid-19 hit, McKay acted quickly, temporarily closing hundreds of RBC branches and enabling nearly 90 percent of employees — more than 75,000 across 36 countries — to work from home. The CEO was rewarded for his response to the pandemic by buy-side analysts, money managers, and sell-side researchers at securities firms and financial institutions, who ranked McKay first among chief executives in the financial institution sector in Institutional Investor’s sophomore All-Canada Executive Team.
Elsewhere, the sudden drop in customers as people retrenched indoors forced what Air Canada chief Calin Rovinescu described as “the most painful decision of my career”: laying off half of the airline’s workforce. “Given the disappearance of more than 90 percent of our business, we regrettably had to retrench and downsize,” he said.
In the face of great challenges, all of Institutional Investor’s top ranking CEOs embraced innovation...
Amani Korayeim, Sales Director (Europe & Emerging EMEA): amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Emerging EMEA Executive Team
2021 Overview: A refugee crisis following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan could derail a bumper year for Turkey’s Coca Cola Icetek, according to its chief executive Burak Basarir.
Basarir is among the top-scoring chief executives in Institutional Investor’s Emerging EMEA Executive Team, as voted for by over 1,500 buy- and sell-side professionals. The recognition comes as Coca Cola Icetek is expanding in Central Asia after completing a two-year negotiation to acquire the majority stake in the Coca-Cola bottler in Uzbekistan. At the same time, Basarir has one eye on the movement of refugees around the region. “We are following closely the political instability in Afghanistan and the refugee movements across our key markets such as Pakistan and Turkey,” he said.
It’s the closing of borders — and access to markets — that keeps Grigory Vitalyevich Fedorishin from Russia’s largest steelmaker Novolipetsk Steel awake at night. “We are witnessing a surge in protectionism and a trend towards further market regionalization,” said Fedorishin, II’s top-scoring chief executive in the metals and mining sector. “Key global economies will continue to defend their positions and internal markets. This could translate into additional barriers, or into more complex trading conditions among countries.” Nonetheless, Fedorishin said, NLMK has been working to insulate its supply chains against unexpected disruptions for some time. “We were able to quickly adapt” when the pandemic hit, he said, noting that the firm entered alternative sales markets and earned the trust of new customers when traditional business stalled.
At TCS Group Holding, a banking group domiciled in Cyprus and operating in Russia as Tinkoff, Russia’s isolated position on the world stage means it is somewhat insulated from geopolitics, according to chief executive Oliver Hughes. Nonetheless, Hughes, who was the highest ranking chief executive in the financial sector, said Tinkoff is growing faster than the competition. Now the firm faces two challenges: how to scale up quickly while maintaining the quality of its service and where to find the tech talent that it needs to grow its platform. Both will depend on the stability of the market.
“Hopefully we will have an uneventful 2022,” he said.
Amani Korayeim, Sales Director (Europe & Emerging EMEA): amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Europe Executive Team
2021 Overivew: As the world slowly begins to shake off the unprecedented effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, corporate executives around the globe have been forced to grapple with challenges that even the most forward-thinking business leaders couldn’t have imagined just two short years ago. For many of the top-scoring chief executives in Institutional Investor’s 2021 All-Europe Executive Team, supply-chain issues top the list.
“Supply chains around the world are in significant disarray,” said Nestlé’s Ulf Mark Schneider, the top-ranked chief executive in the food sector. “The consequences are rising raw material and freight costs.” Schneider said that the secret to overcoming these issues — and coping with an uncertain geopolitical environment — lies in increased agility and flexibility. For him, that’s not about knowing all the answers, but knowing he can delegate decisions to those who do: “We rely strongly on our people in the markets to know the best way to deliver for consumers, the company and society.”
The pandemic has also heralded a kinder way of doing business for this year’s top-scoring chief executives. “Leaders need to be empathetic, agile and lead with integrity,” said Capgemini’s Aiman Ezzat, the top scoring chief executive in the software technology sector. “The experiences of the last 18 months have brought this into sharp focus for me.”
At Anglo American, Mark Cutifani, the top scoring chief executive in metals and mining, said that the coronavirus forced firms to reassess their goals and values. “Companies had to demonstrate that they were really there for their communities when they needed them the most,” he said. “I’m proud of how Anglo American rose to the challenge.” Cutifani took the “tough but necessary” decision to close mines at the start of the pandemic. Even during the closures, Anglo American guaranteed salaries for its employees in South Africa, as well as housing allowances and company contributions to medical and pensions funds. “Being a partner to our local communities is much more than simply providing employment opportunities,” he said.
Several chief executives said they see the pandemic as a test case for further interruptions on the horizon. “We continue to expect an elevated level of geopolitical volatility,” said Nestlé’s Schneider. Faury agreed. While production at Airbus is down, the company is ramping up its resilience for future shocks. “We learned a lot from this crisis,” he said, “and we concluded that maintaining the status quo cannot be an option.”
Ursula Kizy, Sales Director (Americas): ukizy@institutionalinvestor.com
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2021 Overview: It was a tale of two pandemics for the top-scoring chief executives on Institutional Investor’s 2021 Latin American Executive Team.
Leaders in investment management and chemical manufacturing scrambled to cope with unprecedented demand for products, ranging from digital financial platforms to recycled plastics for water bottles, food packaging, clothes, automotive components, and construction materials. It was quite a different story for owners of bricks and mortar assets with no option but to close.
“Our greatest challenge this year might surprise you,” said Alpek’s José de Jesús Valdez, the second-highest scoring chief executive in the oil, gas, and petrochemicals category. “Demand for our products has sharply increased, outpacing domestic supply in the Americas.”
Meanwhile the last 12 months have mostly been about survival, not expansion, at Aliansce Sonae, the second-largest shopping mall developer in Brazil. Chief executive Rafael Sales, the top-scoring CEO in the real estate category, said 2020 brought with it his toughest decision yet: to close the company’s malls and offices.
Stepping aside was the toughest business decision Guilherme Benchimol of the Brazilian investment management company XP Inc made in the last year. After 20 years as chief executive, he has become executive chairman, nominating Thiago Maffra as his successor. He knew it was the right thing, he told II, but that didn’t make it easier. “XP has been my life since I founded it in 2001,” he said. “It took me long hours of thoughts and conversations in order to make the final decision.”
But he leaves on a high. After leading XP through its public offering in December 2019, Benchimol was forced to rapidly expand XP’s capacity as the company, which provides low-fee financial products and services, faced an unprecedented increase in trading volumes across its platforms at the start of the pandemic.
As he leaves the chief executive post, Benchimol is in a reflective mood. The most important lesson he learned in his business career? Sharing his dream with people who got it — and stuck with him for the duration. “Much of XP’s success to date was achieved due to the partnership model,” he said. “That empowers employees and makes them real owners and CEOs of the company.”
Carvin Lee, Commerical Lead (Asia): carvin.lee@institutionalinvestor.com
Michael Clemons, Sales Director (Japan): michael.clemons@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Asia Executive Team
2021 Overview: If the summer of 2020 had Asia’s top executives fretting over a second surge in coronavirus cases, in 2021 their thoughts are turning to the post-pandemic world on the horizon.
XiaoHai Hou — the top scoring CEO in the consumer and staples category of Institutional Investor’s 2021 All-Asia Executive Team — is wondering how to grasp the challenges and opportunities posed by an explosion in demand for craft beer in China.
In the telecommunications sector, Xiaochu Wang from China Unicom is celebrating 11 consecutive years as the top-rated chief executive in II’s poll, meaning he has an unbroken run at the top spot since the rankings launched.
And C.C. Wei, CEO at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and the highest scoring chief executive in the technology and semiconductor category, is grappling with difficult decisions, as the pandemic caused a shortage of semiconductors used in cars and computers
“Keeping up with changing and increasing customer demand has been a challenge this year,” he said. “It might be an understatement to say that the peaks and troughs of semiconductor demand were more turbulent than we would normally expect.”
Access Results Here: The All-Japan Executive Team
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2021 Overview: Constant evolution in the face of challenges is what unites the top-scoring chief executives in Institutional Investor’s 2021 All-Japan Executive Team. Shigenobu Nagamori, chairman and chief executive of Nidec Corp., quotes Nietzsche: “The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.”
Nagamori is once again the top-scoring chief executive in the electronic components sector for his work at Nidec, the company he founded in a prefabricated hut along the Katsura River in Kyoto in 1973. For more than 10 years, he has been searching for a successor for his business. But few hopefuls can match his resolve: After his father passed away when he was a child, Nagamori’s mother, a farmer, told him that as long as he put in twice as much effort as others, he would succeed in his endeavors.
He may be getting closer to handing over the reins after Nidec promoted Jun Seki to the role of president and chief operating officer in April 2020. Seki was the third outside executive Nagamori had recruited as a potential candidate for president. Nagamori told II that his promotion marks an end to a more non-hierarchical management structure and a return to a top-down approach as the company aims at consolidated net sales of 10 trillion yen by the financial year ending March 31, 2031.
Yasuhiko Saitoh knows well the trials of taking on a business that has been steered by the same leadership for decades. Saitoh became president of Shin-Etsu Chemical in 2016, with the tricky task of helping the company transition from the leadership of chairman Chihiro Kanagawa, who is in his nineties. The laconic executive said the most important lesson he has learned in business is “to keep learning – and that there is no end of learning.” He achieves this partly through collaboration with external partners, a strategy shared by Christophe Weber, president and chief executive at Takeda.
“If the global Covid-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s that speed in R&D can be achieved through effective collaboration and partnerships,” Weber said.
Ursula Kizy, Sales Director (Americas): ukizy@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: America's Top Corporate Access Providers:
Amani Korayeim, Sales Director (Europe & Emerging EMEA): amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Emerging EMEA Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: Emerging market analysts are used to unpredictability. But 2020 has been something else entirely.
As Covid-19 began to spread around the world, forcing countries into lockdown and sending entire workforces home, top brokers observed a sudden increase in demand from investors for research, corporate access — for everything, according to Camille Asmar, HSBC’s head of emerging market equity sales for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
“At the beginning, clients wanted access to everything and wanted to know everything,” he said. “We were here to support them and guide them throughout the pandemic and volatile markets.”
For investors in the developing markets of Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and South Africa, HSBC was particularly well suited to guide them, having long focused primarily on emerging markets. On the research team, for example, every analyst has more than 15 years of experience covering predominantly emerging markets, according to Raj Sinah, head of research for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
“In emerging markets we are used to volatile moves and waves, so for us as a combined team — sales, research, and corporate access, which have worked together for over a decade — we were used to navigating situations such as this one,” Asmar said. “We were in a position stronger than anyone else to be there for our clients.”
The clients seem to agree: HSBC was among the top-performing firms in Institutional Investor’s Emerging EMEA survey, which asked investors to rate the region’s research purveyors, sales teams, and corporate access providers. The London-based bank was joined in the top rungs by global firms like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and UBS Group.
Amani Korayeim, Sales Director (Europe & Emerging EMEA): amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Europe's Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: “When volatility and uncertainty are high, that’s when investors need a top-quality, experienced research team to navigate a landscape that’s been very dynamic almost day-to-day,” says Theepan Jothilingam, head of research at Exane BNP Paribas.
This includes a high-quality corporate access program.
“Clients wanted greater access to corporates so they could take a real-time pulse on what companies are seeing,” says Paul Reynolds, Exane BNPP’s head of advisory. “That in turn required corporate access teams to be very responsive not just in terms of getting a number of clients connected but also changing the business model in the sense that you’re offering a virtual service now.”
Investors seem to have appreciated Exane BNPP’s efforts: The bank came second this year’s ranking of Europe’s Top Corporate Access Providers, behind first-place provider Kepler Cheuvreux.
Access Results Here: UK Small & Midcap Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: Formerly known as Extel’s U.K. Small & Mid-cap Survey, the small- and mid-cap results are the first Extel rankings to be published under the Institutional Investor brand this year, following II’s acquisition of Extel in 2018. Instead of ranking the best overall brokers, as in previous Extel surveys, this new version highlights the top firms across three categories: research, sales, corporate access.
The ranking of U.K. Small & Mid-cap Corporate Access Providers was topped by Peel Hunt, with Investec coming in second and Numis taking third.
The survey, which included 293 portfolio managers and analysts across 203 firms, took place during the early weeks of the pandemic, with polling closing on April 17. This makes it one of the first to capture investor sentiment toward their corporate access providers during the height of 2020’s uncertainty.
“Corporate access has absolutely gone online,” said Andrew Peck, head of Investec’s listed client group. Despite this shift, Investec has seen “an enormous amount of contact between fund managers and analysts and companies.”
“More contact between the buy side and the sell side than I’ve ever known,” Peck added.
Carvin Lee, Commerical Lead (Asia): carvin.lee@institutionalinvestor.com
Michael Clemons, Sales Director (Japan): michael.clemons@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Asia's Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: When Covid-19 sent China — and then the rest of Asia — into lockdown, JPMorgan Chase & Co. was one of the first to make the switch to virtual corporate access.
“I believe we probably held the first virtual event globally,” said Ryan Holsheimer, the bank’s Asia Pacific head of cash equities and equity distribution. “We had a conference in Shenzhen in February, right as things were starting to get cancelled and travel plans were thrown into disarray. We quickly moved the conference from physical to virtual, and we had 200 investors attend that virtually.”
Since then, everything has gone virtual — a new normal that Holsheimer and other corporate access leaders expect to last at least through the end of this year, if not longer. According to Holsheimer, JPMorgan has moved all of its conferences for the rest of the year online, while adding conference calls and other virtual meetings to meet a surge in demand from investors who are tuning in by the thousands.
This readiness to quickly adapt seems to be paying off, at least according to Institutional Investor’s 2020 ranking of Asia’s Top Corporate Access Providers.
Access Results Here: Japan's Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: Investors have chosen Nomura as the Japan’s top corporate access provider, rating the Japanese bank highly for its logistics and one-on-one meetings, among other attributes.
Daiwa Securities Group was ranked second by buy-side voters, followed by SMBC Nikko Securities in third.
Corporate respondents, however, chose Daiwa as 2020’s top access facilitator, based on investor introductions, site visits, conferences, non-deal roadshows, and feedback. Nomura came in second among corporations, while Mizuho Securities placed third.
About 142 investors and 52 corporate representatives voted to determine Institutional Investor’s 2020 ranking of Japan’s Top Corporate Access Providers.
Access Results Here: China's Top Corporate Access Providers
Ursula Kizy, Sales Director (Americas): ukizy@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: Latin America's Top Corporate Access Providers
2020 Overview: Latin American corporate access — like everything else touched by the coronavirus pandemic — has moved entirely online. But while the business of connecting investors and companies looks very different in 2020, the region’s top provider hasn’t changed.
BTG Pactual once again ranked first among money managers and corporate respondents in Institutional Investor’s 2020 ranking of Latin America’s Top Corporate Access Providers. Nearly 200 investors and 130 corporate representatives voted in this year’s survey to determine the firms that provide the best corporate access in Latin America.
Corporate voters showed a stronger preference for local firms...
Esther Weisz, Sales Director (Americas): eweisz@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-America Sales Team
2020 Overview: It has been a year in which investors have needed the support of the sell side’s sales teams — and one firm has differentiated itself as the best in client service. Morgan Stanley has definitively risen to the top of Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-America Sales Team, which recognizes the firms with the best sales professionals. This year the bank repeated its first-place finish in specialist sales and claimed No. 1 in the generalist sales category, bumping JPMorgan Chase & Co. into second place. While much of last year was spent digesting regulation like the European Union’s updated markets in financial instruments directive — which unbundled research dollars from trading in January 2018, transforming client relationships — this year’s sales teams were focused on delivering the best possible service amid the global pandemic caused by the coronavirus...
Esther Weisz, Sales Director (Americas): eweisz@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The Latin America Sales Team
2020 Overview: JPMorgan Chase & Co. has defended its crown in Latin America sales.
The global firm was named the No. 1 provider in Institutional Investor’s 2020 Latin America Sales Team, prevailing once again over a number of domestic firms.
In another repeat of last year, Brazilian bank BTG Pactual maintained its second place finish — but there is where the consistency ends in 2020’s commission-weighted leaderboard.
Credit Suisse rose two spots to take third, while Santander rocketed from tenth place to No. 4. BofA Securities rounded out the top five this year, after placing eighth in 2019.
When votes were weighted by respondent assets under management, the top two spots still went to JPMorgan and BTG Pactual, in that order. However, Santander and Credit Suisse switched positions, and Morgan Stanley claimed fifth place instead of BofA.
Access Results Here: The All-Brazil Sales Team
2020 Overview: BTG Pactual is once again No. 1 in Brazil sales.
After reclaiming the crown last year, the Brazilian bank has defended its title against global and domestic competitors in Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-Brazil Sales Team.
Local bank Bradesco BBI placed second in the annual ranking of generalist sales teams, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped to third. Itaú BBA and Santander took fourth and fifth, respectively. The results were decided by some 240 buy-side money managers at more than 180 firms with major holdings in Latin America.
While the main leaderboard was weighted by how much voters spent on sell-side commissions, II also produced a set of results weighted by assets under management. BTG Pactual topped these as well, followed by Bradesco BBI in second, JPMorgan in third, and Santander in fourth. Itaú BBA rounded out the top five.
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The Emerging EMEA Sales Team
2020 Overview: Emerging market analysts are used to unpredictability. But 2020 has been something else entirely.
As Covid-19 began to spread around the world, forcing countries into lockdown and sending entire workforces home, top brokers observed a sudden increase in demand from investors for research, corporate access — for everything, according to Camille Asmar, HSBC’s head of emerging market equity sales for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
“At the beginning, clients wanted access to everything and wanted to know everything,” he said. “We were here to support them and guide them throughout the pandemic and volatile markets.”
For investors in the developing markets of Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and South Africa, HSBC was particularly well suited to guide them, having long focused primarily on emerging markets. On the research team, for example, every analyst has more than 15 years of experience covering predominantly emerging markets, according to Raj Sinah, head of research for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
“In emerging markets we are used to volatile moves and waves, so for us as a combined team — sales, research, and corporate access, which have worked together for over a decade — we were used to navigating situations such as this one,” Asmar said. “We were in a position stronger than anyone else to be there for our clients.”
The clients seem to agree: HSBC was among the top-performing firms in Institutional Investor’s Emerging EMEA survey, which asked investors to rate the region’s research purveyors, sales teams, and corporate access providers. The London-based bank was joined in the top rungs by global firms like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and UBS Group.
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Europe Sales Team
2020 Overview: “When volatility and uncertainty are high, that’s when investors need a top-quality, experienced research team to navigate a landscape that’s been very dynamic almost day-to-day,” says Theepan Jothilingam, head of research at Exane BNP Paribas.
A talented sales team also helps.
Sales teams are “incredibly important to clients in terms of filtering what’s important,” according to Paul Reynolds, Exane BNPP’s head of advisory.
“The time that clients have spent with sales teams is higher than any point in the last year,” he says.
Investors seem to have appreciated Exane BNPP’s efforts: The bank came first in the 2020 All-Europe Sales Team, followed by Kepler Cheuvreux in second place.
2020 Overview: Formerly known as Extel’s U.K. Small & Mid-cap Survey, the small- and mid-cap results are the first Extel rankings to be published under the Institutional Investor brand this year, following II’s acquisition of Extel in 2018. Instead of ranking the best overall brokers, as in previous Extel surveys, this new version highlights the top firms across three categories: research, sales, corporate access.
The U.K. Small & Mid-cap Sales Team was topped by Numis Securities, followed by Investec in second and Peel Hunt in third.
The survey, which included 293 portfolio managers and analysts across 203 firms, took place during the early weeks of the pandemic, with polling closing on April 17. This makes it one of the first to capture investor sentiment toward their brokers during the height of 2020’s uncertainty.
“The future is always uncertain — now more than usual,” said Will Wallis, head of research at Numis, by phone. “Analysts who know businesses well have been able to help institutional investors frame their thinking. While it doesn’t mean we have a crystal ball, if you have a deep understanding you are in a better position to make some judgment calls on what may or may not happen.”
David Enticknap, Managing Director: david.enticknap@institutionalinvestor.com
Access Results Here: The All-Asia Sales Team
2020 Overview: Amid unprecedented times, a new firm has taken the crown in Asia equity sales.
Some 1,200 money managers elevated UBS from last year’s second place finish to No. 1 in Institutional Investor’s 2020 All-Asia Sales Team, based on its sales coverage across 12 Asian countries. Respondents were asked to rate sales teams on six attributes, including their ability to add to value to research, generate ideas, and provide a global context. In a decisive performance, UBS ranked first in every attribute.
After 2019’s debut in the pole position, Citigroup was bumped to second, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. improved three spots to take third place. Morgan Stanley slid one spot to fourth, and BofA Securities moved up a rung to crack the top five.
The shakeup mirrors the upheaval experienced in most of Asia over the last year. While U.S.-China trade tensions dominated the markets in 2019, these were summarily replaced in early 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic that engulfed the region and then the globe.
Access Results Here: The All-Japan Sales Team
2020 Overview: For the third consecutive year, Nomura has topped Institutional Investor’s All-Japan Sales Team in a decisive ranking by buy-side money managers.
Daiwa Securities Group placed second, improving on 2019’s fourth place finish in the commission-weighted ranking. SMBC Nikko Securities and Mizuho Securities fell one spot each to place third and fourth, respectively. The highest rated international provider was JPMorgan Chase & Co., which rose from seventh place to crack the top five.
More than 380 investors from 227 firms were asked to consider six attributes when rating Japanese sales teams: understanding of client needs; idea generation; service and responsiveness; global context; value added to research; and market knowledge and feel. Their responses were then weighted based on how much their firms spend on commissions.
A separate ranking of equity sales teams, created by weighting survey responses by assets under management, produced an identical top five.
Access Results Here: The All-China Sales Team
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II Research provides impactful consulting services with a deeper dive into the full data set, providing access to the voter universe, competitor analysis as well as peer group benchmarking.
Our latest product, the II Insights Dashboard, delivers a unique, customised access to thousands of data points from across our proprietary research portfolio. Easy to navigate, the platform is a strategic decision-making tool allowing clients to identify opportunities and mitigate risk by regularly monitoring their relative market perception and performing a capability gap analysis. The analysis is based on actionable and comparative data analytics across global markets.
The independent nature of the data, delivering authentic and relevant competitor insights, provides a unique perspective on market position and allows every analyst or IR team to understand their value against a peer group. The granular data will position clients competitively, informing better strategic decisions and enabling more effective resource allocation.
"Institutional Investor’s independent IR Perception and Benchmark analysis, derived from the annual All-Europe Executive Team survey, allows us to objectively assess our IR activities relative to our peers – in and outside our sector and region. Understanding best in class and benchmarking ourselves has been a great value in raising the bar and becoming better. The detailed analysis and consultation with the II team allowed us to identify action-specific take outs that help inform our IR outreach to be more targeted when engaging with specific investor groups – by region or size." Head of IR, GN Store Nord
"The II survey is the most honest, independent way of assessing our Company’s relationship with the market. It is a key metric for us, even for internal purposes, as it is considered the fairest way of evaluating our annual performance. Iberdrola has historically been top ranked at the survey. The report produced alongside with such survey is the perfect complement since it allows us to identify those areas and countries where results have been weaker and, therefore, subject to improvement. It is impossible to thrive from the self-complacency." IR Team, Iberdrola
“The feedback we receive from the I.I. poll is valuable to us as it represents the views of our institutional clients and crystalizes their assessment of our thought leadership as a firm overall and in individual sectors.”
Nick Rosato, Head of North American Research, J.P. Morgan
“II Research is a unique industry benchmark which is a critical tool for our business. With high investor participation, good quality data and a comprehensive results package, II Research is a tool we rely on 12 months a year."
Aurelie Moyse, Head of Research Client Strategy, Exane BNP Paribas
Earlier in 2020, Institutional Investor Research announced a global strategic partnership with WeConvene, the largest investor access platform.
Together we will aim to improve accessibility to both platforms for our mutual clients by: 1) providing exclusive access to Institutional Investor Research’s global research and rankings data on the WeConvene platform; 2) integrating Institutional Investor Research’s survey technology into the WeConvene platform; and 3) appointing Institutional Investor Research as a global distribution partner for WeConvene’s Investor Relations (IR) platform.
For WeConvene’s global buy-side, sell-side and corporate clients, the Partnership will provide access to Institutional Investor Research’s global research and rankings data which can be utilised when creating and promoting investor access events. Under the agreement, Institutional Investor Research’s existing clients will have full access to the research and rankings data, while summary data will be available to all other users of the WeConvene platform. Furthermore, access to Institutional Investor Research’s survey portal will become available through the WeConvene platform, enabling a broader and seamless reach and facilitating ease of use for buy-side, sell-side and corporate participants.
Having Institutional Investor Research global research and rankings data, directly accessible within WeConvene, puts important decision-making data at the fingertips of portfolio managers, sell-side analysts and Investor Relations professionals as they plan their meetings and decide how to best spend their time. Leveraging Institutional Investor Research’s global sales team as distribution partners for WeConvene’s IR solution means Institutional Investor Research can provide a comprehensive offering to their Corporate clients.
“We have always believed in the powerful impact that Institutional Investor Research’s insights and ranking data can have on decision making processes, particularly when deciding on who to meet, made more poignant as time is the one resource that cannot be created, only optimised.” commented Radek Barnert, CEO at WeConvene. “Our partnership with Institutional Investor Research will help our customers make better decisions about how they spend their time and thus create value for their clients.”
“For over 25 years, identifying excellence through subjective feedback has enabled Institutional Investor Research (including Extel in Europe) to become the market-leading source of market intelligence for equities, fixed income and corporate executive team performance”, said David Enticknap, head of Institutional Investor research. “The partnership with WeConvene will enable us to reach a broader corporate audience and deliver better insights from deeper engagement.”
TUYID - Turkish Investor Relations Society
Save The Date: December 2021
Click here to watch the 2020 award ceremony
MEIRA - Middle East Investor Relations Society
Save The Date: 25th October 2021
UK IR Society
14th - 18th June 2021
DIRK - Deutscher Investor Relations
Save The Date: September/October 2021
ARIR - Romania Investor Relations Association
Date TBC
On 24th of November 2020, Institutional Investor partnered with IR Society to run this year's Best Practice Awards presented across four categories in the self-entry section, with the winners determined by a judging panel of experienced professionals, and four categories in the voted section.
Laura Hayter, CEO of the IR Society, said:“The development and promotion of best practice in investor relations is at the heart of the IR Society, and our annual Best Practice Awards, now in their 20th year, are fundamental to this work. The global pandemic combined with ongoing changes in the regulatory environment and greater demands from investors have challenged IR teams to continue to push the boundaries in best practice IR and to ensure their company’s reason for existence and investment case are clearly articulated. Each year we are delighted by the standard of entries, with this one being no exception. Many congratulations to all our winners, who demonstrated best in class investor relations in their respective categories.”
Paul Lee, Chair of the Judging Panel, said: “Fundamentally, investors want honesty in corporate reporting, and in this very difficult year, more than ever that's what people will want, will respect and will be looking for. Companies should be entering these awards. If you're not already proud of your reporting, improve it so you are. If you are already proud of your reporting, then of course, you should be entering.”
NEVIR - Dutch IR Awards
Save The Date: 1st July 2021
AIR - Italian Investor Relations Association
Coming Soon: Mid-July 2021
Institutional Investor Research is proud to sponsor the 2021 NIRI Virtual Conference, expected to be held on June 22-23.
The National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) is a United States professional association for investor relations (IR) professionals. Located in Alexandria, Virginia, NIRI is the professional association of corporate officers and investor relations consultants responsible for communications among corporate management, shareholders, securities analysts and other financial publics. NIRI's circa 3,300 members represent over 1,600 publicly held companies and $9 trillion in stock market capitalization. NIRI was founded in 1969 and has 33 chapters located throughout the United States.
Institutional Investor Research is proud to sponsor AIRA's 20201 Annual New Zealand Investor Relations Update, expected to be held on July 7.
Click here to view the agenda.
David is the Managing Director and Head of II Research, joining Institutional Investor in March 2018 through the acquisition of Extel, where he had been in charge since August 2016. Initially tasked with the integration of the II (Europe) Research and Extel surveys, David also headed European sales and was responsible for developing the II Research premium products and services. A former military helicopter pilot, David started his career in finance with five years in Equity Operations for NatWest Markets and UBS in London & Hong Kong. In 2003, he moved to CLSA, culminating in his role as Global Head of Client Management. A relocation to Europe followed in 2012, and he joined MainFirst AG as Head of Client Strategy in April 2014. David is married with three children and enjoys tennis, sailing, golf and cooking.
Esther is the Director of Sell-Side Sales for Institutional Investor Research. In this role she is responsible for selling research on Institutional Investor’s sell side rankings and managing relationships with Research and Sales Directors at leading financial service firms globally. Previous to this position Esther held several roles in the group such as Director of Client Relations and Senior Research Associate.
Esther studied at Concordia University in Montreal for a finance degree.
Dennys Gil is the Head of Subscription Sales at Institutional Investor Research. She joined Institutional Investor in November 2017 as a Sales Executive coming from a prior sales position. Originally from Dominican Republic, she moved to NYC in 2012 to purse her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Zicklin School of Business at CUNY Baruch College.
Amani Korayeim is the All-EMEA Director for Sales and Product Development of lnstitutional lnvestor Research. She oversees key client relationships, strategic partnerships and the launch of new research products as well as the expansion into new markets. She works closely with IR and executive management teams, running capability assessment workshops to help inform and drive IR outreach strategies.
Before joining lnstitutional lnvestor, Amani worked in the business information sector providing research based advisory services to professional services companies on global mandates. She has spent the last 8 years in the IR space and speaks regularly at IR society events focused on global trends in IR, outreach optimisation and the impact of new regulations. Amani obtained the Certificate of Investor Relations (CIR) from the UKIRS and graduated from the University of London with a BSc in Economics & Politics.
Ursula Kizy is the Director of Product Development and Sales for Institutional Investor Research, providing independent market analyses for corporate clients in the Americas. Ursula began at Institutional Investor guiding quality control for sell-side equity and fixed-income research analyses, before concentrating on corporate research. Ursula’s work is primarily focused on bringing the latest capital markets insights to the investor relations community to help curate effective IR communications and strategize outreach to key members of the investment community.
Michael Clemons, an American residing in Tokyo, has over 27 years of finance/investment banking experience in Asia, having worked in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and Japan. Having held various Chief Operating Officer roles over the years in both the financial sector as well as philanthropy institutions, Michael has broad experience in Equities, Human Resources, Strategy, Governance, Audit as well as Information Technology.
Disclaimer: All posts are the views of myself and not Institutional Investor.
Having lived and worked in Japan over the last 27 years, Michael has dedicated the last 13 years working in philanthropy groups, the current role being a middle person between Investors and NPOs and Social Enterprises in relation to their funding requirements. Prior to this, Michael worked with Nomura International (Hong Kong), Barclays Capital (Japan), CLSA Credit Lyonnais Securities (Tokyo) and West LB Securities Pacific, Ltd(Tokyo) where he assumed the roles of Chief Operating Officer/Operations Director.
Michael graduated from the University of San Francisco with a Bachelor of Business Administration Degree and speaks fluent Japanese and conversant in Spanish.
Carvin is the Commerical Lead, Asia for Institutional Investor. In this role, he is responsible for finding new revenue opportunities and managing existing customer relationships for II Research in Asia. Previous to this role, Carvin has spent 9 years with Questex Media were he has held various roles in Client Services, Project Management and Business Development before becoming the Publisher in 2015. As the Publisher of Questex he directly manages the editorial, operations and sales functions of three regional enterprise publications. Carvin holds a Bachlor Degree in Marketing and Public Relations from the Polytechnic University where he was placed in the Dean’s List.
Sally joined Institutional Investor Research (II Research) in London in December 2019 and is responsible for creating and implementing the marketing strategy to support II Research’s growth objectives, improve the brand reach, drive higher customer engagement and to support product evolution into a fully integrated platform.
Prior to this Sally worked at BennBridge and was responsible for establishing the marketing function in the UK, building brand awareness, credibility and profile raising, supporting business growth and driving revenue of the boutiques. Sally previously worked at Gresham House and Momentum Global Investment Management, responsible for developing strategic positioning using various marketing approaches and ensuring that marketing needs were appropriately met across selected target markets. Sally has also held positions at GAM, Henderson Global Investors and State Street Global Advisors, writing a wide variety of marketing material to a range of client types.
Sally holds a BSc Psychology degree from the University of Southampton, the Investment Management Certificate, as well as taking CFA level 1 and recently achieving a merit in CIM Level 6 Diploma in Professional Marketing (digital strategy).
Dasom is the Marketing Manager at II Research, responsible for driving global digital marketing strategies to support the business’ growth objectives. She joined Institutional Investor through the acquisition of Extel in March 2018.
Dasom has a BA in Media Communications and a MSc in digital culture & information technology at UCL. Dasom comes from a multicultural background and has lived in South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Jessica Giambo, Head of Operations: jessica.giambo@iiresearch.com
II acquired Extel in 2018. For any Extel-related enquiries please contact:
Kristina Djagileva, Sales Support Executive: kristina.djagileva@iiresearch.com
Mariola Mandla, Corporate Project Manager: mariola.mandla@iiresearch.com, +44 20 7779 8815
For voting-related enquires please contact:
Tucker Ewing, Senior Project Manager: tewing@iiresearch.com, +121 222 3643
Dynah Kent, Head of Engagement: dynah.kent@iiresearch.com, +212 224 3107
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Events will maintain a maximum capacity and density of participants will be set up in such a way to allow physical distancing.
At all of our events, we will work with the venue to ensure we maintain the highest standards of hygiene and cleanliness.
Our event teams will communicate our health and safety standards, procedures and event guidance clearly to all attendees before the start of the event.
To keep you safe, we’ll need to ensure all our participants, partners and staff follow the Events Shield and local procedures and protocols.
