Bharat Parekh
Bank of America
Merrill Lynch
First-place appearances: 0

Total appearances: 3

Analyst debut: 2011

Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Bharat Parekh rises one notch to No. 2, in part because he is “a person with great integrity in an industry that’s unreliable at best,” in the words of one U.S. portfolio manager. Parekh, who also earns a runner-up position in Capital Goods, covers 16 infrastructure names. Among those is Tata Power Co., which he has been urging clients to steer clear of since May 2012. At that time, Parekh saw that margins for Tata Power’s coal business were declining, so he downgraded the Mumbai-based integrated power company from neutral to underperform, at 88.10 rupees. The timing proved premature because the shares climbed 23.6 percent through the end of the year, beating the sector by 10.2 percentage points. But by mid-October they had plunged to 79.30 rupees, for a life-of-call loss of 10 percent that trailed the sector’s 4.7 percent decline. Parekh wins particular praise from readers of a February primer in which the analyst railed against the industry’s “reckless bidding and lack of sanctity of contracts” that left the sector too risky for investors. “It is still not the time to buy,” he insists now. — Ben Mattlin