Economics & Strategy – Investment-Grade Strategy: First

At No. 1 for a third year running is James Reid’s Deutsche Bank trio, which also takes top honors in both General Strategy and High-Yield Strategy, and ranks second in Credit Derivatives.

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James Reid & team
Deutsche Bank
“Their research features an almost professorial comprehensiveness despite a light, personal touch.”

At No. 1 for a third year running is James Reid’s Deutsche Bank trio, which also takes top honors in both General Strategy and High-Yield Strategy, and ranks second in Credit Derivatives. In early September, after the European Central Bank unveiled the technical details of the Outright Monetary Transactions plan through which it would buy bonds of euro zone member countries (thus preserving the single-currency economic union), the London-based strategists urged clients to go long on nonfinancial corporate credits from Italy and Spain, on the belief that those countries would be likely participants in the OMT program. Although they don’t single out individual tranches, the spreads on Italian and Spanish nonfinancial corporates had tightened, on average, by 100 basis points and 200 basis points, respectively, through mid-January. The researchers’ reports are “informative without being too weighty,” observes one U.K.-based money manager. Reid, 38 joined the firm in 2004 after working as a credit strategist at Barclays for nine years; he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and economic history at England’s University of Warwick. — Carolyn Koo

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