The 2014 All-Europe Research Team: United Kingdom, No. 2: Nicholas Bates, John Bilton & team

After three years at runner-up, Bank of America Merrill Lynch reclaims the No. 2 spot it held most recently in 2008. The four-member crew in London is now co-headed by约翰·比尔顿and newcomerNicholas Bate, and the analysts works in concert with BofA Merrill’s pan-European sector researchers to cover “upwards of 150 U.K. stocks from a bottom-up perspective,” reports Bilton, leader of the No. 3 team in Equity Strategy. The team makes macro and sector calls instead of providing individual stock picks, earning applause along the way for what one loyalist terms its “differentiated strategy work.” Bate advises that “easier credit conditions, firmer labor and housing markets and a more supportive global backdrop” will contribute to the U.K. economy’s expanding by 2.7 percent this year, just shy of the 2.8 percent figure the Bank of England projects. Accordingly, the researchers forecast that the FTSE 100 Index will rise 9.6 percent this year to close at 7,400, establishing a new high point that would easily best the existing record of 6,930.20 set at the end of 1999. Preferred sectors going forward, he says, include energy, a “deeply unloved sector globally” whose “cash returns should increase”; pharmaceuticals, a “cash-return story in 2014”; and real estate, “which has lagged homebuilders in 2013 but looks well placed to benefit as the U.K. recovery gathers pace.” BofA Merrill, however, counsels investors to avoid U.K. industrials, “which are at full valuations relative to both history and to global peers,” Bate explains.