Alexandra Hauber & team J.P. Morgan Cazenove
The buy side says: “Alexandra’s talents are perfectly matched to the times.”
As austerity-conscious European governments slashed their health subsidies, pricing became an issue for the continent’s drugmakers for the first time in at least a generation. After three years in the runner-up position, the J.P. Morgan Cazenove quartet led by Alexandra Hauber rockets to the top, thanks in part to giving investors a comprehensive sense of how the changed economic landscape will affect long-term sales and pipeline models. Clients also praise the team’s coverage of Novartis. After the Basel, Switzerland–based drug developer acknowledged in July 2009 that “underlying growth in operating and net income to record levels in 2009 could be more than offset in reported results by currency-related losses,” other analysts grew cautious, but the J.P. Morgan Cazenove team took a contrarian view, reiterating its overweight rating and telling money managers that Novartis had a strong pipeline and a diversified enough business to withstand any reasonable downturn. By year-end 2010 the stock had advanced 24.6 percent and outpaced the sector by 8.1 percentage points. Hauber, who earned a master’s degree in pharmacology at Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and an MBA at Insead in Fontainebleau, France, joined Bear, Stearns International in 2001 from Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, where she covered European pharmaceuticals; Bear Stearns Cos. was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2008.