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Lee Phillips,
Waqas Samad
& team
Barclays
“They are thoughtful, accessible and responsive to client requests.”
Newcomer Lee Phillips joins Waqas Samad in guiding the ten-member Barclays crew to a second straight appearance in the winner’s circle. The researchers, who are based in London, “are always on top of how the bond market operates and know which asset classes to index,” according to one impressed investor. Over the past year the group has been enhancing its emerging-markets indexes to include more countries and sectors, Samad says, to better reflect the options for investors in those markets. And the analysts have joined forces with MSCI to create indexes that incorporate environmental, social and governance benchmarks; these should be available later this year. ESG issues have drawn increased interest from equity investors, and now the trend is moving into fixed income, especially with regard to government and government-related issuers, explains Phillips. The 39-year-old joined Lehman Brothers in 1998 after earning a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the U.K.’s University of Strathclyde; he moved to Barclays ten years later. Samad, 43, came to Barclays in 2007 from Deutsche Bank, where he was head of index research for Asia and Europe. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Imperial College London. — Carolyn Koo