Davy Stockbrokers and NCB top list in 'Finance' industry survey

Davy Stockbrokers and NCB have won most of the top accolades in Finance magazine's annual survey of the stockbroking industry.

NCB's strong performance in the survey is noteworthy as it comes only two years after the broker lost a number of senior executives and analysts to the start-up Merrion Stockbrokers.

While Davy was nominated by Irish fund managers as providing best overall sales service for equities, NCB has won the same accolade for domestic bonds.

Davy's Mr David Smith was nominated best equity salesperson, followed by Ms Linda Hickey of NCB and Mr Kieran Mahon of Davy.

On the bond side, NCB's Mr Ciaran Duffy won the top award followed by Mr Shane Lawless and Ms Imelda Sexton of AIB's primary dealer unit.

In a new category, NCB's Mr John Sheehan was voted analyst of the year, followed by Merrion's Mr John Coolican and Davy's Mr John O'Reilly.

Overall, NCB analysts won seven of the individual analyst awards.

Davy's Mr Jim O'Leary, soon to depart stockbroking for academia, regained the top economist title, although last year's winner, Dr Dan McLaughlin - then with ABN Amro - was not considered this year after he moved from stockbroking to Bank of Ireland Treasury.

NCB's Mr Michael O'Sullivan was nominated best bond analyst, followed by Ms Martha Cordial of Goodbody and Mr Oliver Mangan of AIB.

In the equity sector, Davy's Mr Robbie Kelleher retained his number one position as best overall strategist, followed by Mr John Clarke (who left ABN Amro in June) and Mr Colin Hunt of Goodbody.

Within individual sectors, the top-rated analysts in the Finance survey are: Mr David Odlum (NCB) for property; Mr Joe Burnell (Davy) for paper/packaging; Mr Shane Matthews (NCB) for airlines; Mr John Sheehan (NCB) for both building materials and mid-cap industrials; Mr Eamonn Hughes (ABN Amro) for financials; Mr Liam Igoe (Goodbody) for food and agribusiness; Mr David Marshall (NCB) for pharmaceuticals; and Mr John Coolican (Merrion) for telecoms, media and technology.

UBS Warburg won the award for best international firm - overall dealing service, followed by Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank.

UBS's second award was for best equity research from an international firm, where it was followed by Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs.