< The 2014 All-Europe Fixed-Income Research Team
& team Barclays First-Place Appearances: 2
Total Appearances: 2
Team Debut: 2012 No firm garnered sufficient support to produce publishable results in this sector in 2013, but that’s not so this year. Under the leadership of London-based newcomer Daniel Rekrut, 42, Barclays’s team of two claims the top spot, the same position the firm earned in 2012. This duo is sensitive to credit shifts along the ratings spectrum. For example, in October, the analysts downgraded Telecom Italia from market weight to underweight in anticipation of a downgrade. The diversified Italian telecommunications services provider’s CEO had just resigned, and they were concerned that its fundamentals were so weak that it risked being dropped to high yield. Later that month, ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service did just that, and Standard & Poor’s followed suit in November. Just like that, Telecom Italia — among Europe’s biggest bond issuers — became the largest component of the Barclays Pan-European High-Yield Index. Rekrut, who also captains the third-place squad in High-Yield Technology, Media & Telecommunications, covered that sector for Lehman Brothers then UBS before joining Barclays in 2010. He obtained a BA in finance at New York’s Syracuse University.