The 2014 East Coles Cor-

porate Performance Re-

search found that Health
Care was the top sector for
the ASX Top 100 in terms
of overall performance,
followed by Banks then
Basic Materials. The worst
sector was Consumer Dis-
cretionary, with Metals &
Mining and Consumer
Staples not far behind.
Other Financial Services
was the best performed
sector in the Next 100,
followed by Misc Con-
sumers then IT&T. The
worst sector was Industri-
als, then Health Care and
Metals & Mining.
The slow down in Chinese
growth is no doubt respon-
sible for Metals & Mining
languishing at the bottom
of both league tables, and
it is not surprising to see
both Consumer sectors at
the bottom of the Top 100.
Clarity of Strategy was
the best performed catego-
ry within with ASX Top
100, followed by
Effectiveness of CEO
and Access to Manage-
ment. Its worth noting
that the latter category is
with respect to upper man-
agement. The worst cate-
gories were Access to
Management (excluding
CEO/CFO), Investment
Desirability and Capital
Management.
In terms of the Next 100,
the best performed catego-
ry was Access to Man-
agement, followed by
Effectiveness of CEO
then Clarity of Strategy.
The worst performed cate-
gory was Credibility,
then Investment Desira-
bility and Shareholder
Value Focus. Interesting-
ly both the ASX Top 100
and Next 100 are well
satisfied with the perfor-
mance of the CEOs, the
access to senior manage-
ment and the clarity of the
strategies. The Top 100
would like to see more
access to middle and low-
er management and better
capital management,
whilst the Next 100 lack
credibility and require
better shareholder value
focus. Interestingly both
indices were somewhat
lacking in Investment
Desirability.
Best Sectors &
Performance Categories
Methodology & Data Sample
A wide range of types and
sizes of fund managers are
polled on 22 manage-
ment / investment charac-
teristics of Australian
companies. All ASX 200
companies are assessed
and rated, with buy and
sell side respondents scor-
ing the companies they
have responsibility for via
our online mechanism or
Excel.
Respondents score each
stock out of 10 in each
performance category and
an average is taken to
derive each score.
Buy side respondents are
broken down into 4 tiers
based on size, with signifi-
cant samples taken from
each tier.
The Australian reported
on the primary results of
this Research which are
also available on Bloom-
berg at COLE<GO>}.
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Volume 1, Issue 1
July 2, 2014