Vincent Laurencin & team, Exane BNP Paribas
The buy side says: “They’ve got a good local track record in France and are close to French companies.”
Vincent Laurencin, 35, pilots the Exane BNP Paribas squad to a third consecutive first-place finish. “The team has cohesion and depth of knowledge,” according to one satisfied client. Laurencin, who is based in London but commutes to Paris once a week, and his associates follow 150 French companies. “The sovereign deleveraging process and therefore the need for austerity in Europe will carry on for many years,” he says. “This will disrupt the classic cycle of long periods of growth followed by short, sharp recessions that has been the postwar norm.” Such an environment makes it “particularly dangerous to buy stocks and sectors that look cheap on non-earnings-based metrics” such as price-to-book value ratio, he adds — and “the real stars will be those growth companies that continue to beat earnings expectations despite the economic environment.” Current favorites include Paris-based distiller Rémy Cointreau and Dassault Systèmes, a 3-D-software developer headquartered in Vélizy-Villacoublay.