Tal Liani  BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research The buy side says: “Tal has a great combination of industry knowledge and practical stock-picking sense.”

After three years at No. 2, Tal Liani rises one rung to finish on top for the first time; the BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research analyst is also ranked second in Telecom Equipment/Wireless. “Tal has always been thoughtful and committed in his investment approach — he is great at identifying investor sentiment and presenting a unique view on the sector,” declares one advocate. Liani, 43, told clients in January to sell their shares of Blue Coat Systems, a developer of optimization and content-­filtering software based in Sunnyvale, California; he anticipated a slowdown in the space and dubbed Blue Coat the “least successful vendor in its segment.” The stock plunged 51.4 percent, from $30.20 to $14.68, through August; during the same period the sector was flat. Liani, who holds a 1995 master’s degree in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, joined Merrill Lynch in 1998 from Israel’s Nessuah Zannex ­Securities, where he was head of research.