A high-profile research analyst who identifies and bets on troubled companies has acquired an unusual and perhaps unwarranted amount of influence in the brief period of time he’s been in this line of work. Forty-six-year-old Fraser Perring, a resident of Lincoln, England, founded and runs Viceroy Research with two other analysts. Their investigations of what they claim are misleading corporate disclosures or flawed business models have regularly sent the stock prices of their targets spiraling downward.