Gabriela Baez |
Maneesh Deshpande |
Evren Ergin |
Gabriela Baez, Maneesh Deshpande, Evren Ergin & team Barclays SECOND TEAM Phillip Mackintosh, Edward Tom & team Credit Suisse THIRD TEAM John Marshall & team Goldman Sachs RUNNERS-UP Heiko Ebens & team Merrill Lynch |
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In first place for a second straight year is the nine-member team piloted by Gabriela Baez, 30, Evren Ergin, 37, and Maneesh Deshpande, 40. The group, which moved from Lehman Brothers following its acquisition last month by Barclays Capital’s parent, publishes “comprehensive reports that provide detailed antitrust and regulatory analysis, and analysis of other aspects that affect two companies’ ability to complete a merger,” explains one buy-side enthusiast. Case in point: the team’s October 2007 analysis of Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia Corp.’s bid to buy Navteq Corp., a Chicago-based provider of digital maps, for $8.1 billion. Many analysts predicted that the deal would fail to win regulatory approval from the European Union because of antitrust concerns, and those concerns caused Navteq’s stock to trade well below the $78-per-share bid price. The team assured investors the deal would go through, and it did, closing in July. New co-leader Phillip Mackintosh helps Edward Tom steer the Credit Suisse squad up one notch to second place. In June the team published “When Oil Hell Breaks Loose,” predicting that oil prices were about to plunge and advising investors to write short-dated call options on oil exploration and production stocks. By mid-September the price of oil had fallen 22.2 percent, and E&P stocks were down 32.0 percent. Slipping one rung to third place is the Goldman, Sachs & Co. quartet now led by John Marshall, following Maria Grant’s January promotion to deputy director of U.S. equities research. In July the team recommended buying call options on Amgen — a biotechnology giant headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California — in anticipation of the stock’s gaining on news of favorable results from a clinical study of its osteoporosis drug, Denosumab. Amgen’s share price was up 25.1 percent in mid-September.
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