Technology, Media & Telecommunications – Software: Second

 Kasthuri (Kash) RanganBank of America Merrill Lynch

Kasthuri (Kash) Rangan claims second-place honors for a second straight year. “We are very bullish on the software sector long term,” the Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst says. “Megatrends such as cloud [computing], big data, social enterprise, virtualization and HTML5 are all driving huge innovation and creating new, unprecedented market opportunities for software companies.” In August 2010, Rangan dubbed as top pick San Francisco’s Salesforce.com, a provider of relationship management software services, on the belief that the company would benefit from the shift to cloud computing. The stock, then at $96.63, had shot to $145.18 by late August 2012 — gaining 50.2 percent over the life of the call and 12.8 percent in the trailing 12 months. “His long-term buy recommendation on Salesforce is confirmation of his stock-picking prowess,” cheers one investor. Rangan, who is based in San Francisco, currently recommends three other Bay area developers: Oracle Corp., Splunk and Tibco Software.