< The 2015 All-Asia Research Team
Total appearances: 26
Team debut: 1995Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which slips from first place to second, has been “rebuilding” its coverage of Australian and New Zealand shares, one local portfolio manager observes. “They have had some of the best analysts in the market, but that has been upset by departures.” Longtime team head Andrew Kearnan left the firm in spring 2014, and now Sameer Chopra in Sydney and Hong Kong–based Simon Garing lead the charge. Both crew chiefs joined BofA Merrill in 2010. Chopra, 44, previously covered Australian telecommunications names for Deutsche Bank, and this year he and Xinnian (Sydney) Zhang direct the No. 2 group in Telecommunications. He earned an MBA at France’s Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires and a bachelor’s degree in commerce at the Australian National University. Garing, 46, reported on Australian real estate companies for UBS before signing on with the firm. He holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Australia’s University of New South Wales. Together, Chopra and Garing guide a squad of 35 researchers who monitor more than 150 stock from offices in Melbourne and Sydney. Since December the analysts have been advising clients to be wary of Fortescue Metals Group. High iron-ore prices and declining demand prompted them to reduce their rating on the Perth-based metals producer’s shares from buy to underperform. Sure enough, by the end of April, the stock had tumbled 19.9 percent, to A$2.17, trailing its peers by 28.2 percentage points.