< The 2014 All-Europe Research Team

Arnaud Giblat & team
UBS
First-place appearances: 5

Total appearances: 42

Team debut: 1986

UBS vaults from runner-up to crack the top three for the first time since 2003, landing in second place. The London-based team of two is captained by Arnaud Giblat, whose “expertise and ability to organize highly educational company visits and consultations with industry experts,” one backer says, are particularly valuable. Of the 12 names the analysts follow, Britain’s IG Group Holdings, which provides online derivatives trading services to a retail client base, is a particular favorite; they recently dubbed it a UBS key call. “We see strong cyclical upside potential to mature U.K. revenues,” says Giblat. “With 75 percent of their U.K. clients located in the southeast, IG is well positioned to take advantage of growing confidence and rising house prices in the U.K. economy.” More broadly, he adds, “we expect further divergence in subsector performance to continue, as asset managers have significantly outperformed exchanges, which have outperformed interdealer-brokers over the past two years.” European investors are likely to remain buoyed by a risk-appetite recovery, the team contends, barring another financial crisis. “Volumes are likely to improve for exchanges, and market-structure change that is in their favor should start to become more obvious as technical standards are finalized by regulators,” concludes Giblat.