First Coverage Releases 2010 Mid-Year Top Performer Rankings

BOSTON, July 28 /PRNewswire/ -- First Coverage Inc., which provides the fastest-growing alpha capture platform worldwide and is the leader in North American equity trading content, today released its 2010 Mid-Year Top Performer Rankings, which recognize the best equity market institutional sales people and sell-side firms in the world.

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Morgan Keegan & Company, one of the nation's largest regional investment firms offering full-service investment banking, securities brokerage, wealth and asset management, ranked No. 1, outperforming more than 350 firms on the First Coverage platform.  Blake Kukar, an Institutional Sales Representative in Morgan Keegan's Memphis office, earned the top ranking in the individual salesperson category with an average return of 29.72 percent on all U.S. ideas sent to his clients through the First Coverage platform.

"We are delighted to recognize Blake Kukar for his exemplary, positive returns in a market when the S&P 500 was down 7.7 percent during the same period," said Roland Beaulieu, CEO and President of First Coverage. "Despite an economic environment with myriad obstacles – high unemployment, modest income growth, tight credit and global financial crisis – Blake demonstrates that a solid stock picker can navigate even the most challenging market to make money for his clients.  Congratulations to Blake and all our top performers!"

First Coverage rankings are derived from more than 100,000 actionable sell-side trade ideas communicated by thousands of sales people at more than 350 global firms that participated on the system in 2010 and represent a completely objective evaluation of the sell-side.  

"We are pleased with this recognition from First Coverage. Morgan Keegan's Institutional Equity platform is built on a foundation of high quality, in-depth research. The success of our salespeople using this alpha capture system is a reflection of both our research expertise and the experience and capability of our salespeople," said Bill Jump, Director of Institutional Sales and Trading, Morgan Keegan. "Our Institutional Sales and Research departments work in tandem to achieve a very straightforward objective—to optimize value for our clients."

First Coverage's industry leading platform is a web-based solution that simplifies the way that buy-side investment professionals capture, organize and evaluate all types of information coming from their sell-side coverage. The technology allows portfolio managers to easily find and focus on the institutional sales people and information most likely to add value to their investment process.

"I am honored to accept this award and grateful to my research department and teammates at Morgan Keegan, whose support in part made this recognition possible," said Blake Kukar. "Using the First Coverage platform, I can ensure that my high-conviction trade ideas are presented to the right portfolio managers at the right time – and they're able to capture, filter and monitor recommendations in real-time, allowing them to objectively measure the value I provide to their investment process."

For more information or a complete list of rankings, including top ideas by industry, please visit www.FirstCoverage.com or e-mail: [email protected].

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.

In 2009, data flowing through First Coverage more than doubled, following a year when content grew by more than 400 percent. Last fall, the firm announced its strategic alliance with Integrity Research Associates, LLC, an information and solutions provider specializing in the investment research industry.

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. 

SOURCE First Coverage Inc.