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Ilze Roux & team
Bank of America
Merrill Lynch
First-Place Appearances: 1

Total Appearances: 4

Team Debut: 2011

Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s team notches its first top finish on this roster, rising from second place under the guidance of Ilze Roux, who also captains the No. 1 squad in Construction & Engineering. This crew consists of seven analysts spread across Dubai, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London and Moscow. They cover 11 regional transportation shares and are somewhat cautious on the wider group. “The broader transport sector has been under pressure as rates have been hiked, and car prices are rising on weaker emerging-markets currencies,” explains Roux, 40. With little change expected, she and her colleagues recommend that “investors pick carefully those companies that offer defensive growth and exciting medium-term opportunities.” One example of such a name is TAV Havalimanlari Holding, a Turkish airport operator that is among the BofA Merrill team’s top picks thanks to its defensive growth with annuity concession cash flow. At 19.90 lira, the researchers’ target price represents a 19.2 percent premium to the stock’s value at the end of May. They also recommend buying South Africa’s Imperial Holdings, thanks to the company’s logistics opportunities in Africa and its internationalizing niche activities, as well as Globaltrans Investment of Cyprus, crediting its strong rail car fleet, diversified client base and healthy balance sheet. Imperial’s shares closed May at 200.48 rand, and Roux and her teammates project a rise to 250 rand. Globaltrans they assign a price objective of $17.20 per global depositary receipt, implying a 57.1 percent upside from the GDRs’ late May value. Armed with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from South Africa’s Rand Afrikaans University, Roux went to work for the specialist financial services division of KPMG. After three years she joined the sell side, training as a small-caps analyst and then covering industrials names for Nedcor Securities before joining BofA Merrill in 2003.