Bruce Hamilton & team, Morgan Stanley

The Morgan Stanley team, which spent the past two years in first place, slips back to second but continues to impress clients with “solid financial modeling, good marketing and moneymaking stock calls,” as one portfolio manager puts it. Under the direction of Bruce Hamilton, the London-based trio covers 14 companies, the same number as last year — but that figure could fall this year. “The macro environment poses a challenge to business models and could drive mergers and acquisitions,” Hamilton says. Clients also praise a November report examining which asset managers are best positioned to access expanding pools of capital from pension and sovereign-wealth funds. “There have been growing allocations to best-in-class alternatives and concentration in the hands of a smaller number of general partners” that can access multiple asset classes in a variety of regions, he adds. Among the select few are Scotland-based Aberdeen Asset Management and Switzerland’s Partners Group.