Daniel Gewehr & team Santander

The buy side says: “He is well informed about the companies and well connected to the decision makers.”

Repeating at the top of the roster is the Santander trio headed by Daniel Gewehr; the São Paulo–based analyst also captains the No. 2 team in Health Care. Gewehr, 30, and his colleagues track 14 companies in this space, and they plan to add more as the number of initial public offerings swells. They garner high marks for reiterating their buy call on Brazil’s Marcopolo in July 2011, at 6.69 reais. Shares of the bus maker had already more than doubled in value since the crew initiated coverage back in May 2010, largely on strong sales to emerging markets, but the company’s market-share dominance and strong return on equity led the analysts to raise their target price. By the time the team issued a valuation-based downgrade to hold in March 2012, Marcopolo’s shares had jumped another 43.5 percent, to 9.60 reais. Two months later, after the stock had slipped nearly 3 percent, to 9.32 reais, they raised it back to buy on its backlog of business and its earnings momentum. It slipped 1.9 percent, to 9.14 reais, through mid-July, but the analysts continue to recommend it. “They mostly stuck with Marcopolo, and that was the only way to make money in this sector,” cheers one grateful booster. — Ben Mattlin