More than a year after corporate access went virtual in Asia, the region’s top providers are finding some unexpected silver linings for both corporates and investors.
“Corporate access has now become a virtual offering with delivery channels either via phone or enterprise video,” said Dennis Zhang, head of Asia corporate access at Morgan Stanley. “The corporates have benefitted from the reduced travel. The investors have benefited from greater supply, variety and easier access.”
Both corporate management and investors were quick to adapt, according to Vivian Lee, head of APAC corporate access at UBS. “We saw a big surge in meeting up-take,” she said. “Investors were able to access not just regional companies but also global conferences at their own locations. Corporate access has become even more competitive under the virtual environment.”
It was also a competitive year for the firms themselves, according to the results of Institutional Investor’s 2021 ranking of Asia’s Top Corporate Access Providers...
To select the members for Institutional Investor’s 2021 Asia’s Top Corporate Access Providers, we invited participants in the 2021 All-Asia Research Team and 2021 All-Asia Executive Team Surveys to provide feedback on the firms that provided the best corporate access, overall and on a number of attributes.
From the 2021 All-Asia Research Team survey, representing the buy-side point of view, we received responses from 693 investors at 434 firms. This group rated sell-side firms on a scale from 1 to 5 for the overall corporate access they provided in 15 regions: Australia/New Zealand, China, Europe, Frontier Markets, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, North America, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.
Each vote was weighted by the voting firm’s Asia (ex-Japan) commission range and the rating awarded to create the rankings. Additionally, a second result was created using the assets under management, rather than commissions, as the weighting.
The Corporate Access Leaders table, based on the buy-side voter’s survey, was calculated by adding together a firm’s overall corporate access scores within each region to produce a table of the top-ten firms.
From the 2021 All-Asia Executive Team Survey, representing the corporate point of view, 164 corporates voted for both sell-side firms and third-party providers. The five attributes ranked were: Conferences, Feedback, Investor introductions, Non-deal roadshows and Site visits.
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 corporates’ responses, tabulated each firm’s overall 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.