Jason Fairclough & team BofA Merrill Lynch
second team Michael Shillaker & team Credit Suisse
third team Sylvain Brunet & team Exane BNP Paribas
BofA vaults from third place to unseat eight-time champion UBS (now a runner-up) and capture first place for the first time. The three-member team, led solely by Jason Fairclough since the January 2009 departure of Daniel Fairclough (no relation), “looks at the sector as an investor would,” cheers one appreciative client. The analysts upgraded the American depositary receipts of London-based diversified mining giant Rio Tinto in December 2008, calling them a bargain at $71.20 in light of soaring demand for copper and gold. The stock catapulted to $215.39 by year-end 2009, a whopping 202.5 percent gain that easily overshadowed the sector’s otherwise-astounding 107.4 percent advance. Fairclough, 38, spent five years as a mining engineer in Canada, Russia and South America, then earned an MBA at the University of Chicago before joining Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2002.
Holding steady in second place for a fourth year running is the Credit Suisse quartet guided by Michael Shillaker, described by one money manager as “a hard worker who covers the major themes in scrupulous detail.” In August the team upgraded U.K.-based multinational mining giant Anglo American from neutral to outperform, on rising demand for base metals. As of December 31 the stock led the sector by 9.5 percentage points.
Sylvain Brunet, who divides his time between London and Paris, shepherds the Exane BNP Paribas squad up one notch to third. The four-member team upgraded Xstrata to buy last February, at 370.50p, on the Swiss exploration company’s cost-cutting measures. The stock had soared to 1,121p by late December.
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