Tak Hung (Eric) Lau & team Citi
The buy side says: “Lau has achieved credibility in a large, tricky area of the market.”
Tak Hung (Eric) Lau and the team at Citi claim top honors for a fourth straight year. “It’s a smart group with good stock-picking skills,” observes one buy-side backer. The eight-member squad, which works out of offices in Hong Kong, Jakarta, Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore and Taipei, is concentrating on corporate governance as a critical yardstick for determining investment-worthy companies. Current favorites include three Hong Kong–based companies — construction firm China State Construction International Holdings, manufacturer Haier Electronics Group Co. and consumer electronics company VTech Holdings — as well as Taiwan’s Hiwin Technologies Corp., a motion-control company based in Taichung; and India’s Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, a Chennai-based health care provider. The analysts are also keeping their eyes on the possibility of a third round of quantitative easing in the U.S. and a worsening of Europe’s sovereign-debt crises, among other concerns. Lau, 41, worked at Deutsche Bank and Piper Jaffray Asia before joining Citi in 2009. He earned an MBA in investment and finance at England’s University of Hull.
— Carolyn Koo
