Rodney Whitehead & team, Deutsche Bank
The buy side says: “Very strong historical knowledge about the companies they cover and how they trade.”
Deutsche Bank’s team of three under London-based Rodney Whitehead takes the top spot for a third year running. These analysts follow 34 stocks and expect to increase that number this year. Whitehead, 52, has been reporting on the sector since 1993, and investors insist that his analysis “benefits from his longevity in the industry, covering companies through multiple cycles,” as one fund manager puts it. Another investor cheers, “The Deutsche Bank team is, without a doubt, the strongest one when it comes to U.K. retailing.” This strength is a significant boon for the analysts and their clients, because U.K. retailers — the researchers track 19 such stocks — tend to be far less correlated with one another than stocks in the other sectors. In light of this “huge divergence of performance,” Whitehead explains, “getting the stocks right is much more important than getting the sector right.” His team is steering clients toward retailers that have “the biggest proven self-help initiatives, helping them to increase profits even where their markets are declining,” he says. Also high on the Deutsche list are retailers that have significant U.S. or emerging-markets exposure, such as Bermuda-based Signet Jewelers and Dufry, a Swiss company that operates duty-free shops in airports and on cruise ships.
