< The 2015 All-Asia Research Team
Total appearances: 13
Team debut: 1996Bank of America Merrill Lynch leaps from runner-up to capture second place, marking the firm’s strongest showing since 2002. Its ten-member group is now co-captained by Xinnian (Sydney) Zhang and Sameer Chopra, a newcomer to this roster who also directs, with Simon Garing, the No. 2 squad on the Australia/New Zealand lineup. Zhang’s former co-head, Reena Verma Bhasin, has left the firm. The 44-year-old leaders and their colleagues “focus not just on earnings but also other factors, such as investor preferences on dividends, taxation and pension schemes,” observes one portfolio manager. “It’s very helpful for investors.” Spread across Asia — in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney — they are upbeat about the Chinese telecommunications market’s fundamentals, have a positive view of the Chinese telecom market’s fundamentals, citing upcoming wireless telecom tower spin-offs and the government’s push to continue cutting sales and marketing costs. Accordingly, the team maintains positive positions on China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom (Hong Kong). The researchers also favor Australian provider Telstra Corp., citing its mobile subscriber share gains, investment in nontraditional segments and strategic deals that will bolster topline and earnings growth; as well as Total Access Communication of Thailand, thanks to its undemanding valuation, attractive yield and improving profitability from the first half of 2015. More broadly, they see potential outperformance this year from dividend yield stocks, such as those of operators in Singapore and Taiwan, if the U.S. Federal Reserve continues to defer increasing interest rates. Debuting Chopra covered Australian telecoms and engineering companies at Deutsche Bank before moving to BofA Merrill in 2010. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Australian National University and an MBA from Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires in France.