Jan Hein de Vroe & team, ING Equity Markets

The team at ING Equity Markets moves down one place to third. The Amsterdam- and Brussels-based crew of five is piloted by Jan Hein de Vroe and supported by ten pan-European analysts; all told the researchers cover more than 100 companies. “They do a good job setting up meetings with companies and giving us access to top people, like the Dutch minister of Finance and head of the central bank,” asserts one backer. “Such access is key to understanding the macro environment.” The team’s forecast for 2012 is “a bipolar picture,” de Vroe reports, with Germany likely to maintain real gross domestic product growth but southern Europe experiencing a “grim recession.” To cope, the group is recommending a mix of defensive names, growth companies and a few “bombed-out” cyclicals, he says. Top picks include two Dutch companies: specialty-chemicals producer Akzo Nobel and Randstad Holding — the latter buy recommendation based on the belief that the staffing-services provider’s “geographical exposure has recently become more favorable given the current economic outlook” for the euro zone, where “the macro economic outlook is weaker,” de Vroe explains.