Donald Lu Goldman Sachs (Asia)
The buy side says: “Lu is incredibly smart and forward-thinking.”
Last year’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications sector is now two sectors, Technology and Telecommunications, and previously unranked Donald Lu debuts at No. 1 in Technology. The Beijing-based analyst earns acclaim for his stock picking, “specifically the downgrade on MediaTek,” according to one satisfied client. Lu reduced shares of the Taiwanese chip manufacturer from hold to sell in July, at 454.16 Taiwan dollars, telling money managers that declining demand and intensifying competition would put pressure on the company’s margins. He was right: In late January, MediaTek reported that year-over-year net profit tumbled 15.6 percent in 2010, to NT$30.96 billion ($1.07 billion). By the end of April, the stock had plummeted to NT$316.50, a loss of 30.3 percent that lagged the sector by 78.9 percentage points. Lu, 49, earned an MBA in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and covered U.S.-based semiconductor and semiconductor capital equipment companies at J.P. Morgan in San Francisco before moving to Goldman in 2003.
