< The 2016 All-Asia Research Team
Ashish Gupta & team
Credit Suisse
First-place appearances: 2
Total appearances: 12
Team debut: 2000
Ashish Gupta guides Credit Suisse’s 20-strong India equities research team from runner-up to third place. Working out of Mumbai, the analysts have added ten names to their sector portfolio over the past year, for a total of 130, and win plaudits from one admirer for delivering “differentiated work that’s way above the others’.” Similarly, another investor highlights the group’s October “House of Debt” report as particularly valuable for its “deep dive into asset-quality issues and the risks hidden on certain bank balance sheets.” In that piece — the most recent study in the firm’s ongoing series on the subject of India’s overleveraged conglomerates — Gupta and his colleagues estimated that 17 percent of domestic banks’ loans were stressed, compared with the Reserve Bank of India’s value of 11 percent. At the same time, they reiterated their long-standing underperform rating on Bank of India, a commercial and corporate lender headquartered in Mumbai. Its stock had tumbled 42.7 percent during the preceding 12 months, to 142.50 rupees, while domestic shares overall had inched up 2 percent. Through late last month, Bank of India had slumped 31.8 percent further, to 97.20 rupees, against the 3.3 percent decline for its peers. Gupta, 42, has “a knack for providing unique insights into on-the-ground developments and linking them to investment implications,” proclaims a third ally.