Mitali Ghosh & team Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Leaping from runner-up to second place is the Bank of America Merrill Lynch duo directed by Mitali Ghosh in Mumbai. India’s information technology services industry “is entering an investment phase over the next two to three years, which could moderate earnings growth and valuations,” says Ghosh. The team is cautious on stocks with high exposure to discretionary IT spending, but overall “we have a positive bias on the sector, given steady demand — driven by the need to optimize, globalize, invest in managing risk and compliance, and adapt to tech trends such as cloud computing — and likely sustained weakness in the rupee,” she explains. The analysts, who report on 20 companies, are bullish on two Indian outfits: Tata Consultancy Services, which Ghosh says is “well positioned to capture high-volume growth areas like infrastructure-management services and business-process outsourcing,” and Wipro, which she calls an “underappreciated restructuring story.” Ghosh knows “when to hold her cards and when to fold them,” cheers one client. — Pam Baker