Ilan Goldfajn & team Itaú BBA First-place appearances: 0
Total appearances: 2
Team debut: 2013 Ilan Goldfajn directs his Itaú BBA quartet up to No. 3 from runner-up. He also helms No. 3 team in Economics and co-leads, with Ciro Matuo, the top-ranked squad in Local-Markets Strategy. Adherents appreciate the “quality of his work and the independence of his comments,” as one buy-sider puts it. These São Paulo–based sovereign strategists are monitoring several issues that are having an impact on the region’s government debt issuance. Among these are changes in the U.S. jobs environment and their effects on global interest rates and liquidity; the Chinese economy and its influence on raw-materials prices; elections in Brazil in October and in Argentina a year later; the implementation of reforms in Mexico; and tax reform in Chile and its impact on the domestic business environment in the short run. “We look for an overall increase in LatAm sovereign credit spreads toward the end of the year,” Goldfajn notes, “based on our expectations of higher U.S. Treasury yields and less-favorable global liquidity conditions by year-end.”