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Atsushi Yamaguchi Metals First appearance: 1999 No. of total appearances: 15 No. of first-place appearances: 11 Atsushi Yamaguchi is an unabashed admirer of Japanese steelmakers, whose sector is in marked decline, and notes with pride that “I’ve covered the steel industry for 23 years.” When asked what it’s like to share an office with such an enthusiastic fan, his UBS colleagues burst out laughing. “He writes as much as everybody else put together!” proclaims fellow Hall of Famer Jun Harada. One buy-side backer made a similar point last year, telling Institutional Investor, “He provides such frequent reports of his field visits, you need a good-size mailbox to keep up.” Yamaguchi, 47, was introduced to the sector when he accepted a position at Okasan Economic Research Institute Co. in 1989 after earning a bachelor’s degree in commerce at Tokyo’s Waseda University. At the time, Japan’s steel industry was already losing some of its luster, having been displaced by automobiles and electronics as the largest driver of national economic growth, but it was nonetheless formidable. Japan accounted for roughly 18 percent of global crude steel production in 1990, according to the World Steel Association; by 2010 that figure had fallen below 8 percent. China’s output more than quadrupled over the same period, catapulting from about 11 percent to more than 45 percent, the Brussels-based industry trade group reports. Yamaguchi, who is headquartered in Tokyo, moved to Jardine Fleming Securities (Asia) in 1997 and debuted on the All-Japan Research Team two years later, as a runner-up in Basic Materials/Metals. He topped the sector for the first time in 2003, on behalf of J.P. Morgan Securities (which had acquired Jardine Fleming several years earlier), and moved to UBS later that year without slipping from the sector’s top spot — a position he has held for 11 years running. — Henry Scott Stokes | |||||||||||||||||||
