OREANDA-NEWS. July 2, 2007. Alfa-Bank’s Chief Strategist Christopher Weafer was recognized as the top equity strategist on the Russian market by Thomson Extel’s 2007 Focus Russia Survey, carried out by Thomson Financial and Interfax. Alfa-Bank’s Equity Research Team also placed among the top three brokerages for Equity Market Strategy.

This marks the first time that Thomson Extel rated Russian investment bank analysts, asset managers and brokers in their own category. Thomson previously rated Russian market analysts as part of the larger emerging markets group. These ratings are based on voting by global financial market players, which took place from March 19 to May 13, 2007, spanning 152 companies and investors in 12 countries. The majority were from Western Europe and North America. Voting was open to everyone, but votes were weighted by the size of the company’s assets under management.

"The Russian equity market is one of the most dynamically developing in Europe, and today investment managers set a high value on the quality of surveys and advisory. We see this honorary award as the acknowledgement of our analysts’ high repute and professionalism. It is even more pleasing that this recognition comes on behalf of firsthand market participants, many of them being our clients," said Ronald Smith, Head of Equity Research at Alfa-Bank.