Stock research depends much more on the quality of each individual analyst than in the name of the firm that he or she is working for. Having said that, bigger institutions usually have a stronger sales and trading distribution platform complementing their research.

II ranks (http://www.iimagazine.com/Research) are the most common measure of prestige in the research industry. For example, JP Morgan, UBS, Nomura (post-Lehman) and Credit Suisse have the most II ranked analysts.

You can also check out Thomson Reuters' Starmine awards (http://excellence.thomsonreute…..s/starmine).