The markets of Emerging Europe, Middle East and Africa can be summed up in a few words, according to Camille Asmar, head of equity sales for Europe and Emerging Markets at HSBC: “Challenging, unexpected in some ways, and volatile.”
Geopolitical events, oil prices, and inflation across the region have been surprising, he said. Inflation is currently at the forefront of clients’ minds as they navigate challenging markets. “Energy markets and economics present many questions as well as opportunities for investors,” he added.
It has been a difficult year for investors in developed Europe as well, according to Dina Geha, global head of distribution at BNP Paribas Exane. “The largest investor pool — U.S. investors — continued to reduce their holdings in Europe,” she said. “Any hope that Europe might finally outperform was dashed by new fears of war, the energy crisis, persistent inflation and the realization that more earnings downgrades were inevitable. The lack of capital markets activity hasn’t helped either.”
Amidst this turbulent landscape, respondents to Institutional Investor’s recent sales team surveys have elevated their tried-and-true providers.
To select the members of Institutional Investor’s 2022 Developed Europe Sales Team, we invited participants in the broader research survey to rate the firms on their generalist and specialist sales teams.
For Best Specialist Sales, voters rated the salespeople in each sector on a scale from 1-5. A numerical score for each sector was produced by weighting each vote based on both the responding firm’s European equity commissions and their rating.
Using those scores, ranks were then determined. Salespeople were designated runners‐up when their scores came within 35 percent of the third-place scores. We received responses from 1,574 money managers at 705 firms.
For Best Generalist Sales, voters rated firms on 6 attributes: adding value to research, global context, idea generation, market knowledge and feel, service and responsiveness, and understanding client needs. We received responses from some 1,253 buy-side money managers at 680 firms.
Each vote was weighted by the voting firm’s European commission range and the rating awarded to create the rankings. The Generalist Sales Leaders table was calculated by adding together a firm’s overall scores within each attribute to produce a table of the top ten firms. Voters are required to meet eligibility requirements, and all ballots are subject to review by II’s Research Operations Group.
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