< The 2015 All-Europe Research Team
Huw van Steenis & team
Morgan Stanley
First-place appearances: 5
Total appearances: 23
Team debut: 1989
Advancing from runner-up to claim the No. 3 spot on this list are Huw van Steenis and his Morgan Stanley squad, who win praise from investors for their comprehensive and thorough reporting. The researchers track 50 European banks and have assigned the sector an equal weight rating. “We see upside coming from unconventional European Central Bank policy; bank restructuring, in terms of selling some businesses and assets and reprioritizing others; and switching on dividends for some banks,” explains van Steenis, 45. However, “concerns of litigation, regulatory ratchet and a weak macro hold us back from the overall sector.” Their favorite name going forward is Swiss financial services giant UBS, which “will rerate in 2015, as the market will reward portfolio restructuring, extra cost discipline and faster noncore runoff,” he says. The market is worried about the cost of lawsuits the bank is facing, as well as “ratcheting regulations’ pinching dividend paying capacity,” van Steenis acknowledges, “but we hope in 2015 UBS will be over the worst of litigation and new standards will be known potentially as early as February, helping to lift the fog for investors.” UBS’s shares ended January at Sf15.25, and his crew projects a rise to Sf22.
