Andrew Kasoulis & team, Credit Suisse

Down one notch to No. 3 is the three-member Credit Suisse team helmed by Andrew Kasoulis. “Their research is not long, but very sharp — that helps a lot for time-starved fund managers!” says one satisfied client. The analysts, who are based in London, are generally positive about the ten companies they cover. “We think they’re going to continue to be resilient into 2012,” Kasoulis says. (The sector fell 12 percent last year, in line with the broad market’s decline.) “Real consumer impact will be felt more in discretionary areas than in food retail.” However, he notes, the sector is becoming increasingly bifurcated: “We have lots of outperformers and lots of underperformers, and we don’t have many in between.” The outperformers tend to be those with significant exposure to U.K. and U.S. markets, such as the Netherlands’ Royal Ahold and U.K.-based Tesco and Wm. Morrison Supermarkets. The underperformers are more focused on continental Europe — examples include France’s Carrefour and Spain’s Distribuidora Internacional de Alimentación, commonly referred to as Día.