Guilherme Paiva & team Morgan Stanley
The buy side says: “Gui has a clear understanding of the drivers of performance in the region.”
Morgan Stanley rises one rung to finish on top for the first time since 2001. These days the team consists of four strategists working out of Mexico City, New York and São Paulo under the direction of Guilherme Paiva, who also directs crews that finish as runners-up for coverage of Argentina and Brazil. “Latin American economies have coped relatively well with the deceleration in global growth,” says Paiva, 37. “However, their equity markets have naturally struggled in this more challenging environment. We have also seen more government intervention — especially in Brazil — which has added a new level of uncertainty for equity investors.” Since the beginning of the year, the team has been urging clients to overweight Chilean equities, citing that market’s “solid domestic structural growth story, leverage to the global economy and the exposure that some corporates have to the fast-growing Peruvian and Colombian economies,” he explains. Chile outperformed the broad market by 9.4 percentage points, in dollar terms, year-to-date through mid-July, and the group remains bullish. Paiva, who earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School, worked as an equity strategist at Citi and Deutsche Bank Securities before moving to Morgan Stanley in November 2009. He and his associates “provide greater depth than most in the region — with particularly helpful coverage in the Andean region, especially related to corporate access and on-the-ground insight in Peru,” insists one portfolio manager. — Thomas W. Johnson