The Hindu Business Line : SEC-certified TWI analysts to track US stocks from Mumbai

The US-based investment bank Thomas Weisel International (TWI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Thomas Weisel Partners Group Inc (TWP), will have, for the first time in India, SEC-certified (American stock market regulator Securities Exchange Commission) equity analysts tracking the US-listed stocks, sitting out of its office in Mumbai.

To begin with, the company will have 21 SEC-certified equity analysts tracking about 100 stocks listed on the US bourses by the end of this calendar.

Though some investment banks have analysts in India performing back-office support functions such as financial modelling, analysing companies, writing reports and so on, they are not SEC-certified analysts and hence are not allowed to communicate with institutional investors.

"Analysts at TWP's Mumbai office perform the complete role of a sell-side research analyst from financial modelling, analysing companies, writing reports, communicating investment ideas to the sales force and institutional investors, no different from being an analyst on Wall Street," said Mr Praveen Chakravarty, Director at TWI. He was relocated from San Francisco to Mumbai recently.

Increasing staff strength

Currently, TWP has 36 research analysts in the US covering 550 stocks. While this number will remain more or less unchanged, Mr Chakravarty said the headcount in India would outnumber the US operations by end-2007, when the staff strength in Mumbai will be boosted to 40 people, who would cover 250 US-listed stocks. "We will be tracking under-followed stocks in the US. We call them `undiscovered gems," he said, pointing out that Montgomery Securities, run by Mr Thomas Weisel, identified the Infosys story and took the company to Nasdaq. (Montgomery Securities was later sold off to Bank of America).

TWI will focus its research in growth sectors such as healthcare, technology, consumer and retail, industrial growth, and media and telecom.

Getting SEC certification for equity analysts in India was an uphill task for TWI. "We had to convince SEC to conduct computer-based exams (perhaps for the first time) for equity analyst certification in India," he said. For SEC certification, analysts had to pass five gruelling exams, some extending for even eight hours.

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