< The 2015 All-America Research Team

Total appearances: 6

Analyst debut: 2010

Advancing from third place to record her best showing to date, at No. 2, is Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Savita Subramanian, who also earns a repeat appearance as a runner-up on the Portfolio Strategy lineup. “Savita takes that proprietary quantitative research from [BofA Merrill] and slices and dices it in interesting ways to break down earnings estimates and revisions, as well as managers’ performance,” observes one admirer, “which allows you to benchmark what’s working — and whether or not it’s time to jump off the bridge.” Subramanian, 42, is advising clients that “the beginning of the end of easy money suggests that doing the opposite of what worked for the last 30 years should benefit investors. Buy equity over credit,” she says, “developed markets over emerging markets, large caps over small caps, liquidity over leverage and high quality over low quality.” Technology names are the analyst’s favorites. The only sector with liquidity and no leverage, she notes, U.S. tech providers “should continue to be a secular winner in the race to innovate.” She also is touting what she calls “big old boring U.S. companies.” These names bear less sell-off risk, she explains, “because nobody owns them” — that is, they are “underweighted by active managers” — yet they boast healthy balance sheets and are well positioned to gain from expected improvement in the economic cycle. Moreover, this cohort “also provides solid income growth to an aging population seeking out dividend yields protected from rising interest rates,” says Subramanian. Examples of such players include San Jose, California–based networking giant Cisco Systems; integrated oil and gas major Exxon Mobil Corp. of Houston; General Electric Co., the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, which is headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut; and Detroit’s General Motors Co., the leading vehicle manufacturer in North America.