< The 2015 All-Asia Research Team
Total appearances: 20
Team debut: 1996Morgan Stanley notches its 20th appearance on this roster with a leap from third place to No. 1, marking the firm’s first top finish since 2012. Mumbai-based Ridham Desai captains a 19-strong crew that reports on 130 Indian companies and wins investor praise for covering “the territory with a stable roster of analysts who provide consistently top-notch work,” as one client puts it. In March 2014 a steadying domestic economy combined with improving deposit rates led the researchers to turn positive on several financial services firms, including ING Vysya Bank and Shriram Transport Finance Co., which they boosted from equal weight to overweight. Bangalore-based ING Vysya is a full-service consumer bank that agreed in November to merge with Mumbai’s Kotak Mahindra Bank, creating India’s fourth-largest private lender. By mid-April 2015 the 150 billion rupee ($2.5 billion) deal had been completed and ING Vysya’s shares ceased trading. They had soared 74 percent, to a record 1,027 rupees, since Desai and his colleagues upgraded their rating. During the same period, the country’s broad market climbed 31.4 percent. Shriram Transport in Mumbai, which provides vehicle financing for commercial and consumer borrowers, saw its stock jump to 980 rupees, rising 58.1 percent by the end of last month and beating its domestic peers by 37.6 percentage points. Looking ahead, the team is selectively bullish. “Our advice to clients is that India’s macro environment is healing,” says Desai, 47. “Equities are in a sweet spot, with a likely sharp decline in short rates and improvement in growth backed by rising government [and state-owned enterprise] expenditures.” Specifically, the analysts remain overweight on the consumer discretionary, financials, industrials and technology sectors; but they recommend underweighting consumer staples, energy, materials, telecommunications and utilities. “They understand this market from the top down and bottom up,” observes another fund manager.