< The 2015 All-Asia Research Team
Total appearances: 10
Team debut: 2001In its tenth appearance on this roster, Morgan Stanley advances from second place to notch its first top finish. Under the joint leadership of Vinay Jaising in Mumbai and Hong Kong–based newcomer Yu (Andy) Meng, the six-member team reports on 60 companies. That number is likely to increase because the analysts intend to pick up coverage of A shares and other equities in China. Investors hail their fundamental analyses as particularly useful during what has been a volatile time for the sector. Indeed, the region’s oil and gas names slipped 3.3 percent during the 12-month period through April, lagging the broader market by 17.9 percentage points — but Morgan Stanley’s crew singles out the Chinese and Indian markets as attractive. This “is a year for the downstream to outperform,” explains Meng, 34. Of the three big Chinese players the researchers track, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. is their favorite “for the largest downstream exposure and ongoing marketing reform. We believe downstream companies are the key beneficiaries of low crude oil prices.” Additional companies in this space that they believe are well positioned to produce strong results include China BlueChemical, Sinofert Holdings and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. Jaising, 46, joined Morgan Stanley in 1998, having previously been a research analyst at JM Share & Stock Brokers. He started out in the information technology industry, working as a project engineer at Indian-U.S. industrial automator Tata Honeywell. He holds a degree in instrumentation engineering from the University of Mumbai, an MS from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science and an MBA from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, in India. Meng was a senior associate specializing in risk-management consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers before jumping to Morgan Stanley in 2005. He graduated from the School of Management at China’s Fudan University with a bachelor’s degree.