Ian Scott & team Nomura second team Andrew Garthwaite & team Credit Suisse
third team Teun Draaisma & team Morgan Stanley
Unranked last year, Nomura’s two-member team under Ian Scott, 44, catapults to the No. 1 spot. “Their research flow is consistently useful,” asserts one supporter. In January 2009 the strategists predicted that improved earnings visibility would buoy stocks in the year ahead, forecasting that Britain’s FTSE 100 index, then at 4,426.19, would end the year at 5,300, and Sweden’s OMX Stockholm 30 index would fare even better, swelling from 667.97 to 850 by year-end. Through December the FTSE 100 reached 5,412.88, a 22.3 percent gain, and the OMX advanced to 951.72, soundly outstripping expectations with a whopping 42.5 percent surge. Andrew Garthwaite, described by one money manager as “one of the brightest thinkers in the industry,” leads the Credit Suisse quartet up one rung to second place. Advocates applaud the team’s February 2009 reduction from overweight to neutral on tobacco stocks in the group’s model portfolio — the strategists don’t rate individual stocks — on the belief that the companies had become overpriced. By the end of the year, the MSCI Europe tobacco index was trailing the broad market by 20.7 percentage points. After two consecutive years at No. 1, Teun Draaisma’s six-member Morgan Stanley troupe tumbles to third place. In July the team upgraded equities from underweight but only to neutral, convinced earnings would continue slumping. Through December the MSCI Europe index surged 26.1 percent. “Good fundamental research, but they were slow to recognize the rally,” acknowledges one loyalist.
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