Guilherme Paiva
& team
Morgan Stanley
First-place appearances: 0

Total appearances: 5

Team debut: 1994

Reclaiming the second tier after a year as runner-up is the Morgan Stanley squad led by Guilherme Paiva, who also helms teams that capture first place in Equity Strategy and a runner-up spot for coverage of Argentina. The Brazil group reports on 159 companies, five more than last year. In April 2012 they added Embraer to their list of top picks, at $31.52 per American depositary receipt, primarily on the São José dos Campos–based aircraft manufacturer’s “strong position in both the executive and commercial market segments,” reports Paiva, who works out of New York and has captained this crew since 2010. The call was a bit premature: The shares plunged to $22.70 in mid-July 2012 before starting to recover; a year later they had climbed to $37.77, for a 19.8 percent life-of-call advance that outpaced the broad market by 39.3 percentage points. In late October the team added Cielo, a credit card payments processor headquartered in Barueri, to its list. The researchers championed the company’s “leverage to domestic consumption with no credit risk, strong outlook for earnings growth driven by the lack of significant price competition and an attractive 6 percent dividend yield,” he notes. The stock bolted 33.1 percent, from 41.88 reais to 55.67 reais, and trumped the broad market by 44.1 percentage points, through mid-July. The analysts “do the hard work that allows them to stay ahead of the curve and predict trends before anyone else,” observes one buy-side advocate. — Paul Sweeney