Investment Grade – Banking & Financial Services: Second

The six-strong BNP Paribas Securities squad rises one rung to second place. Helmed solely this year by Olivia Frieser in London, the researchers actively follow some 65 companies, with a “unique focus on trends and investment implications,” as one Zurich-based asset manager puts it. In November the team advised clients to go long on the euro-denominated senior short-term 2013 and 2014 floating-rate notes of Spain’s Bankia, Frieser says, on the belief that the FRNs were a bargain at yields of 8.4 percent, despite a recent rally in so-called peripheral bank debt. By mid-January the yields had already tightened to less than 3 percent, she reports. — Ben Mattlin