Kenneth Zerbe
Morgan Stanley
Leaping from runner-up to the second team is Morgan Stanley’s Kenneth Zerbe, who actively tracks 30 stocks. Clients applaud his web-based earnings-preview video presentations, launched in April. “Ken breaks down bank earnings in a concise and timely fashion, providing quick reviews of all the key moving parts in the quarter,” explains one grateful buy-sider. Others point to a September 2010 downgrade of Valley National Bancorp from equal weight to underweight, at $10.70, on concerns about its revenue growth. In August 2012, after the Wayne, New Jersey–based retail and commercial lender’s shares had slipped 10.8 percent, to $9.54, and trailed the sector by 3.9 percentage points, Zerbe raised them to neutral, on valuation. By the end of that month, they had inched up 1.7 percent, to $9.70.