First Coverage Announces 5th Annual Top Performer Rankings - 1st in Europe

BOSTON, February 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- "Rankings Recognize Top Institutional Sales Reps and Sell-Side Firms"

First Coverage, Inc., a global leader in Alpha Capture technology released today its first annual rankings recognizing the top performers in institutional equity sales, sell-side firms and independent research providers in Europe. This is the 5th Annual Global Rankings released by First Coverage, and due to rapid growth of participating Sell Side Firms and Institutional Sales Reps across Europe, we're excited to introduce top performer rankings specific to Europe for the first time.

The 2010 Top Performers rank among the leading institutional experts, outperforming their peers at over 350 sell-side firms on the First Coverage platform globally.

Panmure Gordon & Co, headquartered in London and covering over 250 stocks across 18 sectors, is our number one ranked firm in Europe for 2010. "Our in depth, bottom up research is ideally suited to the First Coverage platform. It showcases our stock picking skills to a wider audience, some of whom we might not ordinarily access," said Jeremy Smith, Director, UK Equity Sales.

The First Coverage rankings are derived from hundreds of thousands of actionable sell-side trade ideas communicated by thousands of sales people at hundreds of firms that participated on the First Coverage alpha capture system and represent the only completely objective evaluation of the sell-side. In the past year alone, overall contributor participation has grown by over 200% with coverage throughout North America, Europe and most recently Asia.

"By most accounts, 2010 was a challenging year for stock picking given the macro events that impacted the markets for much of the year," said Roland Beaulieu, CEO and President of First Coverage. "However, a number of high quality research firms and sales people were able to dramatically outperform their respective benchmarks and peers, and we're happy to announce Panmure Gordon & Co as our Top Ranked European Firm for 2010. With a growing community of 350 participating research firms globally, cracking our Top 10 Rankings for the year is an impressive honor and very meaningful to the Buy Side clients in First Coverage who were able to receive and utilize their research ideas in a more efficient manner."

    
    Top 10 Performing European Sales Representatives

    1    Hamish Dickson    Altium Securities
    2    Brad Meikle       Renewable Analytics
    3    Peter Schofield   ABG Sundal Collier
    4    Gareth Jones      Edison Investment Research
    5    Sebastien Fuki    KBC Securities Inc
    6    Lauri Suoninen    Handelsbanken Capital Markets
    7    Roger Lee         Deutsche Bank
    8    Bas VanZelm       Kempen
    9    Josh Wilson       Collins Stewart
    10   David Izzard      MF Global


    Top 10 Performing European Firms

    1    Panmure Gordon & Co.
    2    Altium Securities
    3    ABG Sundal Collier
    4    Handelsbanken Capital Markets
    5    KBC Securities Inc
    6    MF Global
    7    Mirabaud Securities
    8    Kempen
    9    SNS Securities
    10   Deutsche Bank

For more information or a complete list of rankings, including best long and short ideas, most consistent performers, and industry top performers, e-mail: info@firstcoverage.com.

In addition to providing a world-class alpha-capture platform, First Coverage offers filtered mainstream news, blogs, research and other communications based on the individual interests of buy-side users. The First Coverage Market Sentiment Index, a proprietary indicator derived from actionable sell-side trade ideas sent by the sell-side to their buy-side clients over the First Coverage platform, is syndicated in Barron's weekly and available live on Bloomberg terminals.

About First Coverage, Inc.

Established in 2006 by the founders of First Call and StreetEvents, First Coverage provides a web-based technology, which was developed in collaboration with both the buy-side and sell-side to help money managers more efficiently generate alpha by eliminating the "noise" that they encounter on a daily basis, allowing them to focus on the people and information that matter most to their holdings. The firm's clients comprise large money managers, including Top Ten firms, hedge funds and pension plans, which direct trillions of dollars in assets under management and have access to sentiment analyses of "The Street" and the media as well as the highest-conviction, actionable recommendations submitted to First Coverage by thousands of sell-side participants, who consistently have outperformed the benchmarks. For more information, visit www.FirstCoverage.com.