No. of total appearances: 27

No. of first-place appearances: 10“Real estate is a local business by nature,” observes Toshihiko Okino. “However, this business has become international because of large inflows of global money owing to real estate securitization. I like this dynamic change taking place in this industry.”

Especially now. Last summer, for the first time in more than 20 years, the office-vacancy rate in Tokyo stopped rising and started to fall — from 10.3 percent in the April–June quarter to 9.3 percent from July through September, according to CBRE Group, a U.S.-based provider of commercial real estate services. The decline continued in the final three months of the year, to 8.8 percent. Okino believes property will remain a hot commodity and is bullish on real estate companies.

A graduate of the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Economics, he began his career as a management consultant at a Tokyo-based outfit, then joined the acquisitions department of a major real estate company in that city. However, “I was always interested in working in the financial industry, and it was a natural choice for me to become an equity analyst covering the property sector because I had experience working in real estate,” he explains.

“His industry experience always serves him well and enables him to speak with authority,” one satisfied client told Institutional Investor last year.

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In 1993, Okino accepted a position at Smith New Court Securities (which Merrill Lynch & Co. acquired two years later), then worked at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and Schroders Japan (now Credit Suisse) before joining Warburg Dillon Read (now UBS) in October 1998. He has been with the firm ever since. The Tokyo-based analyst landed on the All-Japan Research Team for the first time in 2000, as a runner-up in Real Estate & Housing. The next year he climbed to third place in that sector and also ranked in Construction, as a runner-up. In 2010, REITs was added to the survey and he began to rank in that sector too.

With a total of 27 appearances to date, Okino has been voted on to the All-Japan Research Team more often than any other analyst except fellow Hall of Famer Kenichiro Yoshida (who has appeared 30 times).

What advice does Okino have for someone considering a career in equity research? “Two things are very important: independent thinking and a responsible investment opinion,” he replies. — Thomas W. Johnson