Claudio Piron & team Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Claudio Piron pilots the Bank of America Merrill Lynch foursome to a second-place debut in this new sector. The team — based in Hong Kong, Mumbai and Singapore — earns plaudits from one portfolio manager for its “frequent and well-researched” reports on both the currencies and economies of Asia. “The dynamic driving Asia foreign exchange appreciation is shifting from a current-account-driven process to capital flows and portfolio flows in particular,” Piron says, thus ensuring greater volatility and an increased risk of overvaluation. This change is occurring in part because “the undervaluation of some of the Asian currencies is not as acute as it once was” and, in the case of China, because of a “rebalancing within the economy,” he adds. The analysts are advising clients to overweight the Philippine peso — “one of the most undervalued currencies in our model,” Piron declares — and Singapore and Taiwan dollars, and underweight the Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah and Japanese yen. — Carolyn Koo