Holger Blum, Yi-Dan Wang & team, Deutsche Bank
Repeating in second place is the Deutsche Bank trio co-captained by Holger Blum, who works out of Zurich, and London-based Yi-Dan Wang. (Blum also leads the top-ranked team in Switzerland coverage and, with Richard Parkes, the No. 1 team in Biotechnology.) The analysts anticipate mixed results for stocks in this sector in the near term, owing to varying levels of exposure to broader economies. “We believe that, on average, these companies can offer investors robust earnings-per-share growth over the medium to long term,” Blum says. “However, their managements will need to work much harder to deliver the same rates of growth compared to what they did before” the global downturn. The team is recommending companies that can deliver double-digit earnings growth and that are largely self-funded or have limited exposure to government financial support, such as Germany’s Drägerwerk, a medical-device manufacturer, and Denmark’s William Demant Holding, a maker and distributor of hearing aids.