Edison Investment Research Continues Expansion, Filling Void in Equities Research
By Gene Marbach, SVP, Makovsky+Co.
Headquartered in London, Edison Investment Research is a leading international investment research company. It has grown to a team of 90 including over 55 analysts supported by a department of supervisory analysts, editors and assistants. Edison writes on more than 400 companies across every sector and works directly with corporates, fund managers, investment banks, brokers and other advisers. Edison’s research is read by institutional investors, alternative funds and wealth managers in more than 100 countries. Edison, founded in 2003, has offices in London, New York, Berlin, Sydney and Wellington.
Recently, Edison brought in a new finance director and two more additions to its London-based team of analysts. In response to Edison’s growing global coverage, Tom Carless joins as a finance and operations director from 7city, a specialist financial training firm; Will Forbes adds to the oil and gas analyst team, having previously worked at Millennium Capital Partners and Credit Suisse; while Zsolt Mester joins Edison’s institutional team from Sanford C. Bernstein.
Edison has hired 13 analysts since the autumn of 2011 and, over the past year, the firm has opened offices in Sydney, Berlin, Wellington and New York.
Tom Carless comes to Edison to take up the newly created post of finance and operations director. He has extensive experience leading private equity-backed, publically listed and privately owned businesses, having spent four years as chief financial officer at 7city and five years as group finance director at Ovum, the ICT research and consulting firm he helped float on AIM before it was bought by Datamonitor.
Will Forbes joins the growing oil and gas team headed by Ian McLelland, bringing the total number of sector-focused analysts to six. He comes to Edison with nearly a decade of City experience including a period in the Credit Suisse oil and gas analyst team before buy-side roles at Arc Asset Management and Millennium Capital Partners.
Zsolt Mester adds to Edison’s institutional team headed by Gareth Jones. He was previously an equity research associate at Sanford C. Bernstein where he focused primarily on analysing banks.
Fraser Thorne, managing director of Edison Investment Research, said: “We are very pleased to welcome the latest recruits as Edison strengthens its international footprint. Tom’s arrival to fill the finance and operations director role strengthens our senior management team and will allow us to continue with our growth across sectors and continents. The addition of Will and Zsolt is part of our commitment to offer our clients the best in quality, in-depth corporate and sector-based research. All three of them bring a blend of financial and corporate experience to Edison, consistent with our offering across the firm. The demand from quoted companies and global fund managers for providing quality, independent research has not let up. However, the traditional corporate research model continues to come under strain. Bulge bracket banks have retrenched from providing a range of equities research, while many UK traditional corporate brokers have broken up or disappeared altogether and the net result has been a dramatic decline in the provision and distribution of quality sell-side equity research. Edison, meanwhile, continues to expand to meet demand from companies and markets for our research, with our teams increasingly international in their reach and presence. While uncertainties persist about macroeconomic growth, we are confident about the success of our business to serve the needs of our clients.”
Special Note: My good friend, Keith Gottfried, Partner at Alston & Bird, has an important webinar scheduled for Tuesday, August 14th, at 4:00 PM EDT. Entitled, “Steps to Take to Make Your Company Less Vulnerable to Shareholder Activists” is a must for those of you at companies that might find themselves in the cross hairs of those pesky activists. Details can be found here: http://webcasts.acc.com/detail.php?id=651855&go=1
You may also be interested in...
