Ridham Desai Morgan Stanley The buy side says: “He is a seasoned analyst with a knack for forecasting big-picture determinants.”

First-teamer Ridham Desai, 43, has been expanding his operations at Morgan Stanley by adding new model portfolios and publications. “His weekly strategy pieces provide a lot of value-­added information,” proclaims one reader. In his 2010 forecast, published in November 2009, Desai told clients to expect market headwinds from rising inflation, among other factors. He advised them to buy state-­owned banks, because “rising rates favor Indian banks as they run a maturity mismatch on their balance sheets,” and midcaps, because “the broader market is likely to generate faster earnings growth of around 25 percent in 2010 and trades at better valuations.” Last year, against a broad market advance of 14.7 percent, the banks sector surged 33.1 percent and midcaps rose 7.3 percent. Desai, who joined Morgan Stanley in 1997 from UBS, is a graduate of Mumbai University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1989 and a master’s in management studies in 1992. He is “a consummate strategist who is essential to our equity planning framework,” declares one money manager.