Wai (Eddie) Leung & team Bank of America Merrill Lynch
The buy side says: “They make courageous but sensible nonconsensus calls.”
Wai (Eddie) Leung steers the five-member Bank of America Merrill Lynch crew to a third straight appearance in the winner’s circle. The analysts, who work out of Hong Kong and Seoul, are upbeat about the 25 companies they cover. In Korea “portal players will benefit from increasing penetration of smartphones and the fourth-generation long-term-evolution service rollout,” Leung says. In China “margins have slipped on slower user growth and rising competition, partly driven by liquidity built up in the private capital market, but we see an opportunity for margins to stabilize on the back of industry consolidation and more-rational spending decisions.” Leung, 38, covered the sector for Deutsche Bank before moving to BofA Merrill in 2007. He holds multiple postgraduate degrees, including a master’s in information technology management from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College. — Pam Baker
