< The 2015 All-Asia Research Team

Total appearances: 2

Team debut: 2014In just its second appearance on this roster, Morgan Stanley earns top honors, rising from No. 2 to knock four-time champion Deutsche Bank down a peg. Wee-Kiat Tan and Hozefa Topiwalla steer the nine-member team from their respective bases in Jakarta and Singapore. Forty-four-year-old Tan, who worked at ABN Amro before joining Morgan Stanley in 2007, is “a passionate, highly knowledgeable, systematic and straight-to-the-point person,” observes one admirer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Technology, Sydney. Topiwalla, 43, also leads one group that earns second place for its coverage of Singapore and another that merits a runner-up position on the Malaysia roster. With Mayank Maheshwari, he directs a troupe to runner-up on the Thailand lineup. “Smart and a good presenter,” as one fan describes him, the analyst earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in financial management at the University of Mumbai. He moved to the firm from ICICI Securities in 2003. The researchers track more than 50 Indonesian companies, up from 45 a year ago, and are “very honest and proactive,” another investor says. “They give plenty of investment ideas.” Owing to slow inflation and the declining rupiah, they are generally neutral on Indonesian equities, which gained just 4.9 percent during the 12 months through April, compared with the regional market’s 14.6 percent rise. But they do recommend that investors favor domestic cyclicals, such as Matahari Department Store. The Tangerang-based chain operator, which is among the nation’s largest, earns a price objective of 20,200 rupiah. That implies a 24.7 percent upside to the stock’s value at the end of April.