Maurício Fernandes & team BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research
The buy side says: “If we had a Maurício in every emerging market, my job would be a lot easier.”
It’s three years in a row at No. 1 for the BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research duo directed by Maurício Fernandes, 37. Hailed by clients as “insightful” and “level-headed,” the São Paulo–based analysts raised Vivo Participações from neutral to buy in January 2010, at 52.50 reais, judging concerns about the São Paulo–based wireless provider’s planned merger with local wireline operator Telecomunicações de São Paulo to be overblown. (Both companies are subsidiaries of Spain’s Telefónica.) By the time the merger closed in June 2011 and Vivo was delisted, the shares had jumped 36.8 percent, to R71.80, and beat the telecom services subsector by 31.4 percentage points. A February 2010 upgrade from neutral to buy on the American depositary receipts of Tim Participações, at $25.27, on the Rio de Janeiro–based wireless provider’s improving earnings, also proved wise. By the end of July 2011, the price had nearly doubled, to $50.04.
