Mark Schoenebaum ISI Group
The buy side says: “Mark has a knack for spotting trading opportunities that make money — sometimes a lot of money — for his clients.”
Although the sector handily outperformed the broad market this year — the New York Stock Exchange Arca biotechnology index surged 12.6 percent, compared with a 5.9 percent loss for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, year-to-date through August — top analysts had to dig harder to replace old favorites that had been knocked off the map because of mergers and acquisitions. Six-time sector king Mark Schoenebaum juggled that mandate while moving from Deutsche Bank Securities to ISI Group, which he joined in June. The 37-year-old analyst earns acclaim for a June buy rating on Genzyme Corp., at $53.38, as the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based protein-drug maker was being wooed for takeover by Sanofi-Aventis. Genzyme’s stock had shot up a very healthy 31.3 percent, to $70.11, by the end of August, when the company announced that it had rejected an $18.5 billion buyout bid from the French pharmaceuticals giant. “Schoenebaum knows more about these companies than anyone else in the world,” insists one buy-side enthusiast.
