Carlos Peyrelongue,
Guilherme Vilazante
& team
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
First-place appearances: 2

Total appearances: 14

Team debut: 1995

Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s group of five vaults from runner-up to second place. Led this year by Carlos Peyrelongue in Mexico City and São Paulo–based Guilherme Vilazante, who joined the firm earlier this year from Barclays, the analysts report on 21 stocks. “Their much-cited and sometimes-copied valuation analyses are the benchmark for the industry,” declares one buy-side enthusiast. Lately, the researchers have found little value in Desarrolladora Homex. They downgraded the Mexico-based homebuilder’s shares from buy to neutral in October, at 29.59 pesos, citing poor cash-flow visibility, and from neutral to underperform in February, at 25.07 pesos, after the company reported fourth-quarter free-cash-flow figures that fell short of guidance projections. By mid-July the stock had plummeted to 7.31 pesos, down a whopping 75.3 percent from the original downgrade and 96.1 percentage points behind the sector. Peyrelongue and Vilazante also manage the team that finishes third in Real Estate. In addition, Peyrelongue leads the squad at No. 2 for coverage of Mexico and, with Francisco Rodriguez Caballero, the one in third place for coverage of North Andean Countries. — Ben Mattlin