< The 2015 All-Asia Research Team

Total appearances: 12

Team debut: 2001

Morgan Stanley spent the past four years as a runner-up and now vaults to second place, winning its highest ranking since 2002. Steered by Shawn Kim, 46, the ten-member crew monitors 95 South Korean companies from a base in Seoul. This is “a well-run team,” one fund manager reports. “If I accidentally send a request to the wrong person, it immediately gets forwarded to the right person.” Among the analysts’ favorite names is AmorePacific Corp., which manufactures fragrance, makeup and skincare products. They boosted their rating on the stock from equal weight to overweight in March 2014 because their proprietary consumer survey indicated that forthcoming exports to China would prove popular. Sure enough, sales exploded for South Korea’s largest cosmetics maker — and the shares followed suit. In late April they halted trading after reaching the exchange’s daily limit on news that AmorePacific’s management planned a 10-for-1 stock split. By then they had more than tripled since the team’s upgrade, soaring 233.7 percent, to 3,884,000 won, while the domestic market gained 4.7 percent. Kim, 46, earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Boston College in the U.S. He worked as a technology analyst and strategist at Goldman Sachs (Asia) before joining Morgan Stanley in 2002.