Morgan Stanley voted best at finding liquidity

According to a survey of buy-side equity traders conducted by AsianInvestor, Morgan Stanley is best at finding liquidity in Asia-Pacific markets, with Citi and Credit Suisse taking silver and bronze.

However, Credit Suisse pipped Morgan Stanley when it comes to trustworthiness. When asked ‘which firm do you trust most’, CS came first, followed by Morgan Stanley and CLSA.

The survey was conducted over the course of September from an eligible universe of 400 traders across 173 buy-sides. We solicited nominations of top clients from sell-side institutions, and buy-sides nominated by multiple brokers were included in the eligibility pool. Ultimately we received responses from 96 individuals from across 56 firms, of which about one-third were hedge funds and two-thirds were long-only desks.

Responses were weighted according to the number of participants per buy-side firm, size of Asian equity assets, and (when asked to select up to three answers) in order of preference.

The full results of the survey will be published in the forthcoming October edition of AsianInvestor magazine.

‘Access to liquidity’ and ‘trustworthiness’ were the top-most ranked attributes that buy-sides value in a broker, our poll finds, with ‘quality of high-touch service’ ranked third.

We also asked the market to identify the best new entrants to the brokerage community, as well as their preferred agency-only providers.

BNP Paribas was voted the new entrant with ‘the most sustainable business model’, followed by Barclays Capital and Samsung Securities. In the agency-only world, CLSA came out on top, with ITG close behind and Knight Capital third, although in fourth place was ‘none’.

The universe we polled uses many counterparties, more than five each. The attribute most sought in a counterparty was ‘trader efficiency’, our poll finds, followed by ‘reliability’ and ‘access to markets’. It’s notable that some attributes that often make the headlines, such as ‘cost’ and ‘anonymity’, didn’t figure highly.

Respondents also opined on commission pools, commission-sharing agreements, and which broker had shown the most improvement.