Jiangqiao (Michael) Tong & team Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank, which spent the past two years in the runner-up position, rises to No. 3. Jiangqiao (Michael) Tong guides the ten-member squad; he also co-leads teams ranked second for coverage of China and runner-up for coverage of Hong Kong, where he is based. Tong’s “work on policy and regulation is particularly good,” declares one backer. The analysts, who cover 52 companies, are urging clients to buy stocks with “significant leverage to tariff hikes” — China’s National Development and Reform Commission raised rates in December — and “resilient secular subsector growth,” Tong says. One example: electricity-transmission and mining outfit China Resources Power Holdings Co. of Hong Kong, which will make a “margin recovery after the tariff hike” and an increase in coal production, he adds. The team also likes integrated gas utility Beijing Enterprises Holdings: “We expect earnings growth to accelerate in 2012, when the utilization of the midstream gas transmission pipelines and consumption by gas-fired power plants in Beijing should start to ramp up,” Tong explains. — Paul Sweeney