THIRD TEAM

Cesar Medina & team  Morgan Stanley

It has been ten years since Morgan Stanley ranked in this sector, but this year the firm’s four-person team captures third place under the direction of newcomer Cesar Medina, who is based in New York. “They’ve been increasing their efforts in peripheral markets and producing top-notch country research,” notes one buy-side fan. “I’m also seeing more and more strategy pieces that keep abreast of fast-moving events.” In April, on the eve of presidential elections in Peru, the team reversed a stance it had held since August 2010 — overweight the Peruvian equities index, owing to its exposure to commodities and their rising prices, and underweight the Colombian equities index — because of “high political uncertainty.” (Ollanta Humala would eventually declare victory, in June, in one of the closest presidential races in that country’s history; he assumed office in late July.) At the time of the analysts’ call, the MSCI Peru index was ahead of its Colombian counterpart by 5.5 percentage points, in local currency terms; since then the Peruvian index has trailed Colombia’s index by 7.7 points, through July.