Anand Agarwal Credit Suisse The buy side says: “He is not afraid to say ‘sell.’ He kept us out of some real duds.”

Anand Agarwal, 31, plants the Credit Suisse flag atop the summit. Prized for “high-­conviction ideas,” in the words of one money manager, ­Agarwal downgraded DLF from neutral to underperform in November, at 362.90 rupees, largely on the New Delhi–based property developer’s poor rate of recurring cash flows. In ­January the company announced that consolidated net profit had slipped from Rs4.68 billion ($101.46 million) to Rs4.66 billion year-over-year in the quarter ended December 31, even as sales had jumped more than 22 percent, to Rs24.8 billion. DLF’s stock had plunged 39.1 percent, to Rs221.10, and trailed the broad market by 24.7 percentage points in mid-March, when Agarwal ceased coverage in anticipation of his departure from the firm. “He was the first to advise us about DLF’s cash-flow problems, and he was right,” reports one grateful client. “He’s extremely good at discovering on-the-ground realities.” Agarwal acquired an MBA from the Indian ­Institute of Management at Ahmedabad in 2002 and worked as a real estate analyst at UBS before joining Credit Suisse in 2007. He moved to Jefferies & Co. in June.