Mikhail Rasstrigin & team
VTB Capital
First-place appearances: 0

Total appearances: 3

Team debut: 2011

Leaping from runner-up to second place is VTB Capital’s Moscow-based pair of analysts under the guidance of Mikhail Rasstrigin. “Mikhail is a highly detailed analyst who has been rightly quite cautious on his sector,” declares one client. The researchers are concerned about the level of subsidized power capacity, such as wind and solar, which has grown to the extent that it has “started to have a noticeable impact on electricity prices,” says Rasstrigin, “and it destroyed the electricity market mechanism.” As a result, uncompetitive thermal capacity has rapidly expanded, he contends, and “the market needs a new model.” They don’t expect a new framework to be fully launched until the end of the decade, and until then, he adds, corporate profits will suffer. In the Russia space, with the industry in the beginning stages of a corporate turnaround that will unlock growing cash flows for all shareholders, as well as cheap stock valuations, he advises that “once minority investors see that they can get a share in corporate profits via dividends, some stocks may double in value.” VTB’s squad is recommending that clients buy power generator E.ON Russia, which is majority-owned by German electric utility E.ON. In this company, says Rasstrigin, investors will find “a high-class corporate governance and shareholder-oriented approach on the Russian market.”