< The 2014 All-China Research TeamYi WangGoldman Sachs (Asia)First-place appearances: 0

Total appearances: 4

Analyst debut: 2010Yi Wang of Goldman Sachs (Asia) rises from runner-up to reclaim the No. 3 position she earned in 2010 and 2011. “She sees things from a unique perspective, like analyzing property data on the city and province level,” applauds one investor. “It’s time-consuming for her but very informative for me.” Indeed, earlier this year, Shanghai-based Wang surveyed 200 Chinese cities by examining their land sales versus population sizes and concluded that the sector is in the midst of a two-year pricing downturn. Conditions might stabilize in the second half of 2015, she notes, but the real estate companies won’t deliver a substantial recovery until 2016. “It will be tougher than the two previous downturns simply because we have a more severe supply-demand imbalance in the industry,” explains Wang, given overall weak aggregate demand and rising supply resulting from several years of aggressive land sales. China’s real estate shares lagged the broader market by 18 percentage points over the 12 months ended in late November, slumping 20.2 percent. In this environment, the Shanghai-based analyst has watched for trading opportunities, finding examples in Country Garden Holdings Co., an integrated property developer based in Foshan; and the A shares of Shenzhen-based China Vanke Co., a housing and shopping arcades builder. The financial positions of these companies will stabilize or even improve in the next few months, Wang believes, citing slower land acquisitions, better asset turnover and inventory reduction.