In day two of announcing the annual winners of our fixed-income research poll we focus on the best analysts and ratings agencies.
On the analyst front, UBS's Edwin Chan won the category hands down. Last year he was second to Ivan Lee, the highly regarded former head of fixed-income strategy and analysis at Citigroup Global Markets, who has since launched a new credit hedge fund in Hong Kong, Serica Capital. Citi still stood out with top-notch researchers Kasemsak Charoensiddhi and Johanna Chua tying for third place. Barclays Capital's Jason Rogers took second place.
The results for the rating agencies are quite similar to last year's rankings. The majority of the respondents chose Standard & Poor's as their agency of choice. Fifty-one percent of the 623 investors we polled said S&P was the agency that influenced their decisions about sovereigns the most, 46% chose S&P for banks, 51% said the agency most influenced their decisions on corporates and 49% chose it for structure finance.
Finally, we asked investors if they thought during the past 12 months the quality of the rating agencies' Asian research had improved. More than half, 59%, said they thought it had stayed the same, which is an improvement from last year when 47% felt that way. Twenty-five percent thought the quality had decreased, which is better than last year when 38% felt that way. But those who think the quality is on the rise remain the same -- this year roughly 16% said as much, as opposed to last year when 15% thought the quality had increased.
.jpg)
