Industry Sectors - Renewable Energy: First

Alberto Gandolfi, Patrick Hummel & team UBS

The buy side says: “They offer a powerful combination of global analysis and local content, which is very important for a regulation-­driven sector like renewables.”

Debuting in first place in a sector newly added to the survey is the UBS trio guided by Alberto Gandolfi, who also co-leads the No. 1 team in ­Utilities, and Zurich-­based Patrick Hummel. Soft sales and expansion difficulties prompted the analysts to downgrade Germany’s Nordex from neutral to sell in December 2008, at €8.60. The call was early — the wind turbine producer’s stock continued to rise, reaching €14.58 in May 2009 — but the analysts stood by their recommendation. Good thing, too. By the end of 2010, the shares had plunged by 35.9 percent, to €5.51, and trailed the broad market by a whopping 67.6 percentage points. “Following their recommendations, I’ve made money on the short side,” applauds one backer. Gandolfi, 33, earned a master’s degree in econometrics from Italy’s Università Degli Studi Di Pavia in 2001 and worked at Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan as a utilities analyst before joining UBS in 2007. Hummel, 32, holds a master’s degree in banking and finance from Germany’s Duale Hochschule Baden-­Württemberg, which he received in 2001; he moved to UBS in 2007 from Germany’s Landesbank Baden-­Württemberg, where he covered the utilities sector.