THIRD TEAM Leslie Alperstein & team Washington Analysis Corp.
The ten-member Washington Analysis Corp. team helmed by Leslie Alperstein repeats in third place. “They’re very close to what’s going on in Washington, and their research effort is focused like a laser on government policy — so, unlike the big firms, it’s not a sideshow for a bigger research department,” says one buy-side supporter. “They only do one thing, and they give you a big-picture view.” One month after the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico — as oil continued to gush from the ocean floor — the Washington-based crew informed clients that the Obama administration would institute a series of regulatory steps including tighter restrictions on new offshore permits and a moratorium on deepwater drilling that would effectively last much longer than the six-month ban then under consideration. They were right. Although the moratorium was officially lifted in October 2010, deepwater drillers were not allowed to resume the practice until they conformed to tougher regulations. In February the Gulf permit index published by Greater New Orleans, a Louisiana-based economic development agency, reported that no deep-water permits had been issued in January, and the agency’s three-month trailing average showed permit issuance had plunged 88.4 percent, from a monthly average of 5.8 permits to just 0.67.