Anne Milne
& team
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
First-place appearances: 3

Total appearances: 12

Team debut: 1993

When Anne Milne took charge of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch team in 2011, the firm hadn’t ranked in nearly a decade. She guided the crew to third place that year and repeated the feat in 2012; this year the 16-member troop rises one rung to second place. The strategists “focus on the most important issues at hand and have a very strong relative-value framework,” attests one backer. Macroeconomic issues are trumping individual stories. “Any important change in interest rates globally or the amount of money that is contributed to this asset class — or withdrawn from emerging-markets corporates — should have a more important impact on performance this year than company-specific news, except in a few cases,” the New York–based leader believes. Therefore, investors should focus on companies with “a strong market position, reputable shareholder groups and stable or improving fundamentals,” she says. — Carolyn Koo