CIMB named number one research house in Australia

In an announcement made last week by Thomson Reuters in the Australian Financial Review, CIMB took joint first place in the 2012 StarMine Analyst Awards for Australia and New Zealand. It tied for top spot with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan, with all three houses winning 12 analyst awards each.

Paul Cassidy, who heads up Broker Relations Asia Pacific at Thomson Reuters, congratulated CIMB on receiving the awards. “In these challenging times where the macroeconomic environment continues to have such a strong influence on market direction and volatility, CIMB analysts have risen to the challenge, achieving a top three ranking across an array of sectors in both the Stock Picker and Estimator categories.”

Following the acquisition of most of RBS’ Asia Pacific investment banking and cash equities businesses, today, CIMB’s research arm covers over 1,150 stocks of Asia Pacific based companies – one of the most comprehensive research coverage platforms in industry.

The StarMine Analyst Awards objectively identifies sell-side analysts and firms whose earnings estimates have been the most accurate and whose recommendations have generated the greatest returns.

CIMB clinched 12 analyst awards in total: for the Overall Analyst Awards, CIMB won a top 10 placing each in both the overall Earnings Estimator and Stock Picker categories. There were two categories in the Industry Analyst Awards – Earnings Estimator and Stock Picker. In each category, StarMine named the top three analysts according to industries.

A total of 10 analysts from CIMB, covering nine different industries, were recognised – in the Estimator category, seven of them earned a top three spot in their respective industries; while in the Stock Picker category, three were top three in their respective industries.

StarMine uses analyst estimates and recommendations as recorded in the Thomson Financial I/B/E/S database. For the industry stock picking awards, analysts are ranked according to their industry excess return that measures each analyst relative to an industry-based benchmark. All analyst returns are calculated relative to the return on a market capitalisation-weighted portfolio of all of the stocks in a given industry.

The StarMine Analyst Awards are part of the Thomson Reuters Awards for Excellence, a global family of awards that celebrate exceptional performance throughout the professional investment community.