This year has seen a big uptick in investor trips and on-the-ground, in-person conferences, according to Camille Asmar, head of equity sales for Europe and Emerging Markets at HSBC. “Our clients have been visiting Emerging EMEA, especially the Middle East, to know it better and live the local experience,” he said.
“Clients want different things at different stages,” he added. “They want to speak to the sales and traders, then to the analysts, then it’s corporate access, then it’s the local experts, then they may look for something completely different — and then they are back with the corporates. At each point, you are having to adapt to what the client and the corporate wants. We are here to bridge that interaction.”
Eric Lopez, head of equity EMEA research and global head of corporate access at BofA Securities, reported that corporate and strategic access activity is higher than ever, demonstrating how highly it is valued by both investors and corporates. “It remains one of the key pillars of our research services at BofA,” he said. “Some of our main competitors pulled back from corporate access post-regulatory changes, but we continued to invest all along, recognizing its value to our clients.”
The investment has paid off. BofA Securities has earned high marks in Institutional Investor’s 2023 rankings of the Top Corporate Access Providers for both Developed Europe and Emerging EMEA.
To select the members for 2023 Emerging EMEA’s Top Corporate Access Providers, we invited participants in the 2023 Emerging EMEA Research Team and 2023 Emerging EMEA Executive Team Surveys to give feedback on the firms that provided the best corporate access, overall and on a number of attributes.
From the 2023 Emerging EMEA Research Team survey, representing the buy-side point of view, we received responses from 152 investors at 121 firms. This group rated sell-side firms on a scale from 1 to 5 for the overall corporate access they provided across six attributes: conferences; field trips; logistics; roadshows; team quality; and virtual events.
Each vote was weighted by the voting firm’s Emerging EMEA commission range and the rating awarded to create the rankings. The Corporate Access Leaders table, based on the buy-side view, was calculated by adding together a firm’s overall corporate access scores within each attribute to produce a table of the top ten firms.
From the 2023 Emerging EMEA Executive Team survey, representing the corporate point of view, 100 corporates voted for sell-side firms and third-party providers. Voters were asked to name their top four firms in the following attributes: investor feedback, investor introductions, road shows, field trips/site visits/reversed road shows, logistics, team quality and conferences/virtual events.
Each attribute score was based on the place awarded to the firm. Scores were then aggregated to create the overall result. The Corporate Access Leaders table, based on the corporate view, tabulated each firm’s overall attribute scores to produce a table comprised of the top-ten firms.
The names of those surveyed are kept confidential to ensure their continuing cooperation. Voters are required to meet eligibility requirements, and all ballots are subject to review by II’s Research Operations Group.