Jaime Brandwood & team, UBS

The buy side says: “Jaime is a consummate professional.”

For an eighth year running, the three-­member UBS team is king of the hill. Led solely this year by Jaime Brandwood, 35, the London-­based crew wins praise from investors for “very fast response times” to questions with “details largely unknown by other analysts.” The researchers, who follow 30 companies, spent last year bearish on the top-­rated stocks in the sector, owing to high valuations and their belief that those testing companies will not be immune to a macro slowdown this year. In contrast, the team believes that the stocks most vulnerable to a slowdown (staffing companies) have already priced in downside risk. “Our bias remains toward advising clients to invest in stocks that have reasonably defensive business models at valuations that are either cheap, such as [U.K.-based security services provider] G4S, or are still below historical levels, such as Bunzl,” Brandwood says. The team upgraded Bunzl from neutral to buy in January 2011, at 745.87p, believing the food-packaging company would enjoy modest growth. The stock gained 18.5 percent, rising to 884p, through ­December.