< The 2015 All-Europe Research Team

Total Appearances: 10

Team Debut: 2005

Citi researcher Sarah Deans and her teammate retain their stranglehold on the No. 1 position on this lineup, extending their run at the top to five years. The London-based duo — which one asset manager describes as “very knowledgeable” — is focusing clients’ attention on several topics for 2015. Two concerns relate to new and proposed regulations from the International Accounting Standards Board. In May the IASB released a new standard on revenue reporting and financial instruments that the 42-year-old researcher and her colleague expect to have a noteworthy impact on companies in the telecommunications sector, which will be required to adjust their reporting of bundled-contracts values. That rule, International Financial Reporting Standards 15, will take effect from 2017, and the Citi team is advising investors to also be on the lookout for possible changes this year to lease accounting practices. At the same time, the analysts are highlighting “the uncertain corporate tax environment and [its] potential impact on multinationals using certain tax-planning techniques,” says Deans. They foresee increasing investor attention on “subjective areas of accounting and long-standing auditor appointments,” she adds, given the announcement last year of a £263 million ($423 million) overstatement of profits at Tesco, the U.K.’s largest retailer, which has employed the same auditor for over three decades. Finally, Deans and her colleague continue to “identify companies with much-lower-than-expected tax charges — and understand the reasons for this,” she notes, “to assess the risk of higher tax charges in future.”