< The 2015 Latin America Research Team

Total appearances: 2

Team debut: 2014In their second appearance on this roster, Luiz Carvalho and his HSBC squad claim the No. 2 position, climbing from runner-up. The São Paulo–based team leader, 35, “navigates the perilous and unpredictable market and geopolitical forces with both objectivity and sensitivity,” says one admirer. Carvalho was an energy analyst at BTG Pactual before jumping to HSBC in May 2013. Previously, he spent seven years in the oil and gas industry at two leading European companies, Royal Dutch Shell and Transocean, managing fuels distributors in Brazil and working on an offshore drilling rig. The researcher logged time on the buy side at Santander before moving across the Street, and he holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. He and one HSBC associate cover ten stocks in the regional sector and are confident in a medium-term rebalancing of market fundamentals and a further price upside over time. Overall, the group tumbled 30.3 percent during the 12 months through mid-July, lagging Latin America’s broad market by 24.4 percentage points. “We believe that companies will face a competitive environment from now on, on the back of U.S. shale oil production growth,” explains Carvalho. “Government interference is another issue to Latin American oil companies. We believe that chemicals could present better investment opportunities than oil for the next year.” Clients appreciate the duo’s range of service — and their coverage of Brazil’s Petróleo Brasileiro, the country’s largest integrated energy provider, in particular. The analysts “provide comprehensive stock coverage and insightful feedback from meetings with managements and other industry experts,” observes another money manager. “Their research on Petrobras is thorough and objective — in spite of, but also sensitive to — the market and geopolitical forces that often make it hard to analyze.”