Corporate access has had its trial by fire over the past two years.
Before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the lifeblood of corporate access — the work of brokers and investment banks to connect the buy side to executives — was comprised of conferences and meetings, all of which had to be transformed for a virtual environment.
But despite the rollercoaster of external environment and market trends, those connections remain an important part of the financial ecosystem, according to Shinji Wakizaka, head of client relations management department at Nomura.
“Corporate access provides vital opportunities for investors and corporates to understand each other and build relationships,” he said. “While it is not essentially affected by market trends, corporate access methods have evolved and become more diverse over time. We are constantly adapting our corporate access services to meet the evolving needs of our investor and corporate clients.
To select the members for Institutional Investor’s 2022 Japan’s Top Corporate Access Providers, we invited participants in the 2022 All-Japan Research Team and 2022 All-Japan Executive Team Surveys to provide feedback on the firms that provided the best corporate access based on specified attributes.
From the 2022 All-Japan Research Team survey, representing the buy-side point of view, we received responses from 157 investors at 113 firms. This group rated sell-side firms on a scale from 1 to 5 on the overall corporate access for these attributes: Conferences; Logistics; Field Trips; Team Quality; Roadshows; and Virtual Events. Each attribute score was based on the rating given to the firm.
From the 2022 All-Japan Executive Team survey, representing the corporate point of view, 41 corporates ranked their top sell-side firms on the same attributes listed above. Each attribute score was based on the rating given to the firm.
The Top 5 Corporate Access Leaders table is based on the corporate and buy-side response and calculated by adding together each sell-side firm’s overall attribute scores to produce a table of the top five.
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. Results are also subject to inspection by an independent auditor.