Michael Jüngling & team, Morgan Stanley

The buy side says: “Michael is the best.”

In first place for a second year running is the three-­member Morgan Stanley team under the guidance of New York–based Michael Jüngling, 40. “No one works harder or digs deeper in terms of understanding the industry fundamentals of what’s driving the businesses” than he does, insists one client. The analysts added coverage of four companies last year, for a total of 20, and plan to pick up a couple more in the coming months. They believe that the sector, a defensive play, will outperform the broad market this year. “Europe will be hit with a recession, and the macro news is likely to be more negative than positive,” Jüngling says. “The key investment theme is one of subsector selection between ‘reimbursed’ and ‘nonreimbursed’ business models. Share price performance will mimic what we saw in 2008, when reimbursed stocks outperformed nonreimbursed by 14 percent globally.”