Do Institutional Investor's analyst rankings mean anything anymore?

The Deal executive editor Yvette Kantrow writes that the Institutional Investor rankings of top analysts may have lost their clout since the latest rankings didn’t have bank analysts Meredith Whitney and Richard X. Bove, who called the current banking crisis, at the top.

Kantrow writes, “Oppenhemier & Co.’s Whitney, who has been feted by everyone from Fortune magazine to CNBC for correctly calling the banking crisis, had to content herself with being named a lowly runner-up. And that doesn’t mean she gets to fill in if II’s top pick in the banks/large-cap category, Matthew O’Connor of UBS, can’t fulfill his ‘first-team’ obligations. There’s a second-team pick, Edward Najarian of Merrill Lynch & Co.; and a third teamer, Michael Mayo of Deutsche Bank AG, for that.

“Indeed, Whitney had to share her runner-up berth with Jason Goldberg of Barclays Capital Inc., née Lehman Brothers Inc. — a guy who has never been on any cover, as far as we could tell. Her not-so-great showing is neither explained nor even noted by the magazine, which also gave the cold shoulder to the year’s other celebrated prophet of banking doom, Ladenburg Thalmann & Co.’s Richard X. Bove. The omission, or near omission in Whitney’s case, of these two bona fide media darlings from an analyst ranking that has long been derided as a popularity contest is an interesting development, to say the least.”

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