BUZZ-Top of the Street: Asset managers, Italian banks

A round-up of notable broker activity this morning from Europe's top-ranked* analysts:

** JP Morgan sees risks linked to market recession for asset managers sector not yet fully reflected in valuation

Downgrades Man Group to 'neutral' as "investment performance has deteriorated not helped by rising volatility"

Sees (Shanghai: 600481.SS - news) achievement of medium-term targets to be increasingly challenging for DWS Group, and along with Hargreaves Lansdown downgrades the stocks to 'underweight'

** Morgan Stanley (Xetra: 885836 - news) remains defensive on Italian banks, seeing increase in funding costs to hit country's economy

Cuts UBI to 'underweight' as it believes premium at which UBI (Taiwan OTC: 6562.TWO - news) trades vs. peers is excessive given similar balance sheets after progress in NPL reduction

Keeps 'overweight' for Unicredit (EUREX: DE000A163206.EX - news) and Mediobanca (Milan: MB.MI - news) , pointing to overdone capital concerns on UCG and underestimated management's plan to redeploy excess capital for MB

(*Analyst rankings from Thomson Reuters StarMine. Scale is from 1-star to 5-star with 5 being best. Analysts ranked on earnings accuracy as well as relative performance of recommendations over trailing 12-month & 24-month periods.)