OREANDA-NEWS. Sberbank Investment Research, the research division of Sberbank CIB and one of the largest and most experienced analytical teams in the market, is pleased to announce that Andy Smith, Head of Equity Research, Managing Director, has won the Best Head of Research in EMEA award at the Sammons Associates Annual Heads of Research Survey 2013.

This year marks the first time a representative from a Russian company has claimed the top prize in the survey’s fifteen-year history. Andy overcame global competition to secure top honours in the award which is chosen by a poll of over 1,600 senior fund managers from nearly 450 institutions in Europe, United States and Asia. Winners are chosen based on market knowledge, management skills, quality of their analysis, quality of their company’s reports, and overall professionalism.

Andy Smith and his consumer sector team recently launched a major piece of consumer research called Consumer Speed Kings, which examines the deep value embedded in consumer-linked names in Russia across multiple sectors. This groundbreaking research compared the Russian consumer investment case with those of the other BRICs and EMEA. The study was accompanied by the Sberbank CIB Ivanov Consumer Confidence Tracker – a bimonthly survey of the Russian middle-class surveying nearly 2,500 Russian consumers across over a hundred cities.

This latest accolade follows a clean sweep at the Thomson Reuters Extel Pan-European Survey 2013, announced earlier this week which saw Sberbank Investment Research clinch top spot as Russia’s leading brokerage firm. The sector teams topped no fewer than nine categories covering Banks & Other Financials, Consumer/Retail, Economics & Macroeconomics, Equity Strategy, Fixed Income Research, Metals & Mining, Oil & Gas, Telecommunications and Utilities, whilst the firm’s analysts swept the board, seizing ten of the twelve individual first places in their relevant sectors.

Sberbank Investment Research provides market leading equity and fixed income investment ideas as part of the Global Markets business of Sberbank CIB. Led by Paolo Zaniboni, Managing Director, and supported by Andy Smith, Head of Equity Research, Managing Director, and Alexander Kudrin, Head of Fixed Income Research, Managing Director, the department performs comprehensive analyses of the market and publishes analytical reports covering individual issuers and industry sectors for its institutional investor client base. The Economics Department, a separate division of Sberbank CIB, publishes monthly economic reports and the “Chief Economist’s View.” The division is headed by Evgeny Gavrilenkov, Chief Economist, Managing Director.