Stéphane Déo & team UBS
second team Takuma Ikeda & team Nomura
third team Benoît Hubaud & team SocGen
Repeating in first place, Stéphane Déo, 42, and his five-strong squad remain “head and shoulders above the competition,” partly because they “aren’t scared to stick their necks out,” clients say. The UBS economists stuck their necks out in late January 2009 by declaring that a “sustainable stock market recovery” was imminent. Within weeks, European equities as measured by the MSCI Europe index reached bottom, then surged 57.6 percent from the early March low through year-end. “They were ahead of the curve, largely by focusing on monetary factors, such as the implosion of credits, rather than cyclical factors,” marvels one fund manager. Unranked last year, the Nomura crew helmed by newcomer Takuma Ikeda sails straight in to second place. In July the team predicted that the European Central Bank, which had cut its benchmark short-term interest rate six times since credit markets froze in the fall of 2008, was done cutting but would not raise rates anytime soon, as economic recovery in the euro zone was expected to be slow. The ECB had left the interest rate unchanged, at an all-time low of 1 percent, through December. Newcomer Benoît Hubaud shepherds Société Générale’s 15-member troupe from runner-up to third. The team, based in London and Paris, predicted in July that the euro zone would pull out of recession by year-end 2009, but local governments would maintain their economic stimulus programs because unemployment would continue to rise. The European Union said all 16 euro zone countries emerged from the recession in the third quarter; however, the number of unemployed keeps going up. “They were right on the big things,” observes one investor.
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