| ING Barings could scarcely have chosen a worse time to slip down the rankings in Euromoney/Global Investor'sseventh annual institutional fund managers' assessments of Asian equity research. The region is attracting more players and competition is cutthroat. The overall ranking is based on a simple question put to fund managers: Which firm has the best analysts in the Asia Pacific region? (For the scores in individual markets see tables.) ING Barings slipped from second position last year to third this year, with Jardine Fleming again taking the top spot and Crédit Lyonnais Securities Asia taking second. Jeremy Palmer, chief executive of ING Barings in the region, is resilient but not complacent: "The overall pattern of this survey, and others, is that we are still a top-tier player. Our historic position of nearly total hegemony was never going to last indefinitely," he says. When fund managers are asked why ING Barings is falling in their estimation, they are generally equivocal. "It is a strong firm, there's no doubt about it," says one. But he adds: "I just don't feel a pressing urgency to call them. I don't think their product has evolved in the way it might." |