Takaaki Yoshino Daiwa Securities Group

The buy side says: “He provides extensive research full of detailed analysis.”

It’s seven straight years at No. 1 for Takaaki Yoshino of Daiwa Securities Group. Yoshino is “an energetic quants analyst who tries to connect everything with stock price movements,” observes one money manager. The 46-year-old strategist believes that the more challenging growth environment for Japanese companies is bringing their shareholder return policies into sharper focus. As a result, he thinks, market participants this year will concentrate increasingly on corporate governance metrics such as excess cash holdings despite a lack of growth prospects and low dividend levels in proportion to free cash flow regardless of sluggish growth potential. Currently, Yoshino is advising clients to “go long on names with negative skewness in return distributions” owing to inequities in supply and demand. His research is abundant with “valuable comments,” marvels one supporter.     — Carolyn Koo