Maxim Korovin
& team
VTB Capital
Despite dropping from first place to third, VTB Capital’s Moscow-based trio maintains a loyal following. The strategists’ “calls are very timely, their response to current events is very fast, and their ideas are quite tradable,” lauds one buy-side supporter. This year the team is headed by newcomer Maxim Korovin, who reports that the pivotal issue facing markets in emerging Europe, the Middle East and Africa is when central banks — the U.S. Federal Reserve in particular — will begin scaling back quantitative easing. “The recent uncertainties in the U.S. economy are likely to keep the Fed accommodative for now,” he believes. “We do not expect any tapering in the Fed’s program of bond purchases until early 2014.” Emerging-markets bonds should benefit from a continuing low interest rate environment in developed economies and, since current valuation levels look fair, the strategists are optimistic. They are advising clients to market weight Russian bonds denominated in hard currencies, especially longer-dated, high-grade, nongovernment issues. They also see “interesting opportunities in the Russian local currency corporate bond space, where credit spreads currently look wide by historical means and compared to the Eurobond market,” Korovin says. — Carolyn Koo