This was one of the most competitive categories in the 2002 internet awards, with 14 contenders, and UBS Warburg wins it narrowly among excellent competition. Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas also have strong sites that are styled similarly, while the Lehman Brothers site, which has taken a slightly different approach, is also highly commendable.
The greatest strength of the UBS Warburg site is the quality of the company models and the fact that it is able to offer these for all the names it covers across the globe. Many sites only offer models as read-only Excel spreadsheets, or do not provide them for the entirety of the companies that they cover. UBS Warburg offers a selection of interactive Excel-based valuation models, such as cashflow models, that allow users to change any numbers or sensitivities they disagree with themselves.
Like several other banks, the UBS Warburg site also enables users to download company financials such as income statements, balance sheets and cashflow statements to Excel. UBS Warburg also offers downloadable sector financials on a country, regional or global basis. The design of the site is neat, clear, pleasant, and well thought out.
A fully customizable front-page saves users time, and UBS Warburg, Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas offer the most customizable sites available. Users of these sites can upload their portfolios and view only the most recent research, and in some cases news, relevant to these as their starting view if they choose.
A particularly powerful tool that several banks, including UBS Warburg, have introduced this year is the heat map. Heat maps are an innovative and extremely flexible way of displaying a number of variables graphically and of facilitating easy navigation.
