Ravi Mehrotra & team Credit Suisse
second team Martin Wales & team UBS
third team Peter Welford & team Jefferies
Vaulting from runner-up to first place is the Credit Suisse duo under the direction of Ravi Mehrotra, who is “not afraid to challenge the consensus,” according to one investor. The pair reiterated its outperform rating on ProStrakan Group in March, deeming the Scottish cancer drug developer’s shares a bargain at 56.75p. In September, after the stock had skyrocketed to 148p — a 160.8 percent gain that bested the sector by a staggering 139.7 percentage points — the analysts closed the call. By late December, ProStrakan’s stock had plunged 41.6 percent and trailed the sector by 32.8 points. Mehrotra, 37, earned a doctorate in biology and proteomics at Oxford University’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in 1997 and worked as a biotech analyst at NatWest Securities (now a unit of Deutsche Bank) and SG Cowen & Co. before moving to Credit Suisse in 2004.
Unranked last year, the UBS trio guided by Martin Wales takes second-place honors. The team initiated coverage of Lonza Group in August with a sell rating, citing slowing demand for the Swiss company’s biological products. The stock had tumbled 24.5 percent by mid-November, and the analysts upgraded it to neutral. The shares slid 11.8 percent further through December.
Debuting in third place is the Jefferies International threesome helmed by Peter Welford, who led last year’s top-ranked Nomura troupe. The Jefferies team launched coverage of Qiagen in March with a buy recommendation, citing the German genetics testing company’s recession-resistant growth profile. The stock gained 21.5 percent through December.
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