Kasthuri Rangan
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
First-place appearances: 0

Total appearances: 5

Team debut: 2008

Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Kasthuri Rangan holds second place for a third straight year. Working out of San Francisco, the analyst covers 20 companies, an increase of three over the past year, and doesn’t expect to add more names anytime soon. “We took an early view several years back that cloud [computing] and big data are set to profoundly reshape the software universe,” says Rangan. “These structural forces are creating new markets and cannibalizing mature ones, thereby creating vibrant investment opportunities for long-term technology investors.” On this theme, Rangan has urged investors to buy Splunk, a San Francisco–based big-data analytics company that specializes in developing software to index logs and other machine-generated information. Splunk went public in April 2012, at $32, and when the shares dipped to $31.36 the next month, he rated them a buy. Through August 2013 the stock bolted 76.1 percent, to $55.21, and outperformed the sector by a remarkable 62.6 percentage points. — Pam Baker