Gordon Lee, Marcello Milman & team BTG Pactual
The buy side says: “The combination of Marcello and Gordon provides the best all-around coverage.”
BTG Pactual’s quartet catapults from runner-up all the way to first place, co-directed this year by New York–based Gordon Lee, who joined the firm in February from UBS, and Marcello Milman in São Paulo; they also co-captain the No. 1 team in Real Estate. The analysts downgraded Brazil’s Rossi Residencial — one of 25 stocks the group covers — from buy to neutral in March, at 9.94 reais, citing the homebuilder’s poor return on equity as well as earnings pressure from contracting gross margins. By mid-July the shares had plummeted 59.3 percent, to 4.05 reais. In April they relaunched coverage of PDG Realty with a neutral rating, at 4.53 reais, anticipating declining demand. Sure enough, by the middle of July shares of the Brazilian residential developer had slid 26 percent, to 3.35 reais. “They were way earlier than anyone else, which helped us avoid losing money,” recalls one advocate. Lee, 39, has visited the winner’s circle before, as sole leader of the UBS Pactual team that topped the roster in 2009. Milman, 31, covered the sector for Credit Suisse before moving to BTG in May 2011; he holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in 2002. — Ben Mattlin