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Craig Huber

Craig Huber Barclays

SECOND TEAM

Alexia Quadrani JPMorgan

THIRD TEAM

Peter Appert Goldman Sachs

RUNNERS-UP

John Janedis Wachovia

Craig Huber, who ­moved to Barclays Capital after its parent ac­quired Lehman Brothers last month, captures first place for a third consecutive year. Investors say he is the “Nostradamus of news­papers” and “predicts things about the news­paper industry two years before anyone else.” ­Huber, 41, has long steered clients ­away from news­papers, citing declining readership and plummeting advertising revenue, and this year is no exception: He was negative on the entire group of newspapers he covers, including McLean, ­Virginia–based Gannett Co. and Sacramento, ­California’s McClatchy Co. The stocks were off 52.7 and 69.7, respectively, year-to-date through mid-­September. The sector slumped 22.8 percent during the same period. In second place for a fifth straight year is Alexia Quadrani, who joined ­­JPMorgan Securities in June, when it absorbed Bear, Stearns & Co. Her “work on advertising agencies really stands out,” asserts one ­money man­ager. Clients also praise Quadrani’s coverage of Arbitron, a New York–based ­media research outfit: Upgraded to outperform in May, on improving profitability, by mid-­September the stock had risen 5.3 percent, outperforming the sector by 15.6 percentage points. Peter Appert of Goldman, Sachs & Co. advances from runner-­up to third place and impresses investors with his “fluency on all names, even those he does not officially cover,” according to one fund man­ager. Investors single out for praise a ­July 2007 report, “Rethinking the Newspaper Stocks,” in which Appert predicted that valuations will continue to fall and the industry will not offer viable investment opportunities until newspapers develop profitable print-­digital hybrid publications — a development still several years ­away.

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