Ehud Gelblum’s career was forged on the anvil of doubt. In the early days, circa 2000 and just two years before revelations of accounting improprieties led to the implosion of Clinton, Mississippi–based telecommunications services provider WorldCom, Gelblum worked with Dan Reingold at Credit Suisse First Boston. “We were not positive on WorldCom, but nearly everyone else was,” he recalls. “We didn’t uncover that fraud, but things were not adding up, the story kept changing, and Dan and I had a number of unimaginably steely moments with management.”
A glimpse into one of those conversations is chronicled in Reingold’s book, Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst. Gelblum, 42, is included in the telling.
“It was from those moments that I learned to trust my gut and not be afraid to stick to my guns,” he says. That quality has endeared him to clients, who have made him a regular on the All-America Research Team. Gelblum, who joined Morgan Stanley from J.P. Morgan in July 2009, has ranked in both Data Networking & Wireline Equipment and Telecom Equipment/Wireless every year since 2005, for a total of 14 appearances and ten No. 1s.
Gelblum also credits his insights to time spent on the buy side; he worked at Greenwich, Connecticut–based hedge fund Andor Capital Management in 2001 and 2002. “You see what’s really important to the buy side,” he says. “You develop a different perspective, and that can put you at odds with what the rest of the sell-siders are saying.”
