The All-Europe Fixed-Income Research Team

Overview

For the eighth consecutive year, money managers chose JPMorgan Chase & Co. as the top provider of European fixed income research.

The U.S.-based bank has earned the number one spot every year since Institutional Investor first began compiling the All-Europe Fixed Income Research Team in 2011. This year, JPMorgan analysts ranked in 18 of the 22 sectors included in the survey, including three first-place finishes.

As reigning champion, JPMorgan leads a top five that is identical to last year’s: Bank of America Merrill Lynch placed second, Deutsche Bank came in third, Barclays ranked fourth, and Citi claimed fifth.

The standings were based on a survey of 680 bond and credit specialists at 381 asset management firms representing $6.2 trillion in European fixed-income assets. Respondents chose their favorite research analysts in each sector, with votes for individual analysts at each firm combined to produce the winning analyst teams.

In addition to this traditional team-based ranking, this year II also compiled a separate ranking based on individual analysts’ scores.

While JPMorgan continued to dominate in the team-based ranking, it fared less well in the analyst-based ranking, placing third with nine ranked analysts. Instead, BofA Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank tied for first with 14 analysts apiece.

These results suggest that JPMorgan’s continued success in European fixed income research has been the result of a strong roster of collaborative analysts, as opposed to individual stars.

In the team-based ranking, JPMorgan took first place for its coverage of investment grade credit from retailing and consumer products firms, led by analysts Ela Kurtoglu and Louie Peters. The bank also ranked first in two economics and strategy sectors: credit derivatives, covered by a team led by Rishad Ahluwalia and Saul Doctor, and currency and foreign exchange, covered by a team lead by Paul Meggyesi and John Normand.

No JPMorgan analysts ranked first in the individual analyst ranking, although six placed second, including Doctor and Normand.

In that ranking, BofA Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank each earned six first-place spots. BofA Merrill Lynch split its six top positions between two categories, high-yield credit and economics and strategy. These included wins for high-yield health care bond coverage and asset-backed securities strategy.

Deutsche Bank’s six first-place finishes came primarily in the economics and strategy category, with global fundamental credit strategy head James Reid winning in four separate sectors: economics, fixed-income strategy, high-yield strategy, and investment-grade strategy.