Emy Shayo Cherman & team  J.P. Morgan

The buy side says: “Emy Shayo Cherman is a great strategist.”

Vaulting all the way from runner-up to first place is the J.P. Morgan team led by Emy Shayo Cherman. The four-member team, which is headquartered in São Paulo, recommended PDG Realty Empreendimentos e Participações in May, at R14.48, after the Rio de Janeiro–based real estate developer agreed to buy rival Agre Empreendimentos Imobiliários, the company that was created last fall through the merger of homebuilders Abyara Planejamento Imobiliário, Agra Empreendimentos Imobiliários and Klabin Segall, to form a Brazilian homebuilding behemoth. The stock had zipped to R18.72 by the end of July, a gain of 29.2 percent that outpaced the broad market by 22.7 percentage points. Cherman, 37, “combines objective figures with unique arguments,” asserts one booster. A 1999 graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York, where she earned a master’s degree in international economic policy, Cherman joined Bear, Stearns & Co. in 2001 as a Latin America economist. Bear Stearns was acquired by J.P. Morgan in June 2008.