< The 2014 All-Europe Research Team Panagiotis Spiliopoulos & team Vontobel First-place appearances: 3
Total appearances: 20
Team debut: 1992 Panagiotis Spiliopoulos leads a dozen Vontobel researchers to a repeat second-place showing. Tracking 125 companies, the Zurich-based troupe earns praise from one investor for its “broad coverage across all the important sectors, from Swiss chocolate to Swiss watches,” as well as its “frequent and timely updates.” The team is urging clients to buy shares of Lonza Group, a leading supplier of chemicals and biotechnology ingredients. Under a hard-charging chief executive installed in mid-2012, the Basel-based company has been paying down debt and streamlining operations, the analysts note. In just the past year, Lonza shuttered a plant in Swords, Ireland; throttled back output at a manufacturing site in Visp, Switzerland; and scrapped a joint venture with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, an Israeli generics titan. Further, Lonza’s biopharmaceuticals margins should “get traction” this year, Spiliopoulos adds, as its outsourcing services reach an inflection point. His crew’s target price for the stock is Sf100, an 18 percent premium to its end-December value.