Sustainable and responsible investment analyst Dayna Linley of research company Sustainalytics won the best individual analyst for SRI research award at the Thomson Reuters Extel first annual Responsible Investment Independent Research Awards.
Linley, Sustainalytics’ Toronto-based energy sector analyst, won 23.9 percent of the votes in the 2012 survey of 239 analysts and portfolio managers from 139 companies worldwide.
She was followed by two other Sustainalytics analysts – Irene Sosa and Laurence Loubieres – in second and third place.
Sustainalytics also took the top spot in four out of seven award categories, the survey for which was conducted in June by Thomson Reuters Extel and SRI.CONNECT.com.
The survey asked asset managers globally to rate both companies and individual analysts in terms of SRI analysis.
Loubieres won top spot in the best individual analyst for corporate governance research category, with 9.9 percent of the vote.
He was followed by Kimberly Gladman of GMI Ratings and his colleague Linley, with 7.4 percent and 6.6 percent, respectively.
‘The survey celebrates and rewards high-performing analysts with recognition and career opportunity,’ the award organizers say in announcing the results.
‘We also hope it will enable managers at research providers to identify strengths and weaknesses in their firm’s analytical capabilities and to benchmark those against peers.’
In the companywide categories, Sustainalytics took top spot for best independent SRI research provider (organization), with 32 percent of the vote. It was followed by MSCI ESG Research with 13.2 percent, and EIRIS with 9.9 percent.
Bellevue, Washington-based research firm Global Market Insite won the best independent corporate governance research provider category, with 24.2 percent of the vote in the survey.
ISS, the corporate governance research firm owned by MSCI, came second, with 12.1 percent of the vote, and Sustainalytics came third with 10.6 percent.
In other awards, Darragh Gallant of Sustainalytics won best client relations/salesperson for SRI & corporate governance research, Co-operative Asset Management took top spot for asset managers in the best users of SRI/CG research and Unilever came first in the ranking of best communicators of SRI/CG needs, followed by Royal Dutch Shell and Intel.
The survey organizers also asked respondents to name the best research pieces or products they received in 2011 and 2012 based on quality of research and innovation.
Sustainalytics was commended for its reports ‘Fracking under pressure’ and ‘Insurance and climate change’, as well as other products.
MSCI was praised for its webinars, sovereign debt coverage and sector reports, while GMI received votes for its reports on compensation and diversity, as well as reports from its GMI Analyst product, launched last year.
Survey respondents were also given the chance to anonymously offer opinions on the ‘most frustrating practice by an SRI/corporate governance research organization’.
The organizers gave no ranking of these practices but offered quotes from respondents, including ‘shadowing one another’s research’, ‘providing loads of data with not a lot of context’ and ‘not respecting timeliness’.
