SECOND TEAM

Yoshiyuki Kinoshita BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research

Yoshiyuki Kinoshita, who, according to one money manager is “reliable and cautious,” leaps from runner-up to second place. The BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research analyst started 2010 with a buy call on Jupiter Telecommunications Co., a Tokyo-based cable-TV operator, and reiterated it just a few weeks later after crosstown mobile phone services provider KDDI Corp. agreed to buy the 38 percent interest in Jupiter owned by Liberty Global of Englewood, Colorado. Kinoshita predicted a counteraction from Tokyo’s Sumitomo Corp. so that it could remain Jupiter’s largest shareholder, and he was right. In mid-February, Sumitomo announced that it would raise its stake in Jupiter to 40 percent, sparking a clash of wills between the two shareholders and prompting Kinoshita to downgrade the stock to neutral, after it had risen 13.2 percent, from ¥92,600 to ¥104,800, and beat the sector by 11.7 percentage points. In June, Jupiter, KDDI and Sumitomo agreed to form an alliance to provide TV and telecommunications services to subscribers, but Kinoshita maintained his neutral stance. Through February, Jupiter’s stock had tumbled 16 percent since the downgrade, to ¥88,000, and trailed the sector by 20.7 points.

Polling and tabulation of data as well as reporting on the sector profiles were completed before the March 11 Tohoku earthquake.