Countries: Iberia – Second

Marta Llano & team, Fidentiis Equities

Fidentiis Equities finishes in the top three for the first time since 2006, jumping from runner-up (where the Madrid-based team spent the past two years) to second place. Marta Llano heads a group of nine analysts who track 74 companies. “Assuming no breakup of the euro, the problems of the Spanish economy center on unemployment, the financial system (including real estate), public deficits and energy dependency,” Llano explains. “The new center-right government, elected in November, has an absolute majority in Parliament and a detailed plan to tackle these problems.” In the meantime, the researchers are telling clients to “remain defensive,” she says, and invest in stocks with less exposure to Spain’s domestic economy; recommendations include Barcelona’s Grifols, which produces blood-plasma products and whose expansion in the U.S. got a boost with June’s takeover of North Carolina–based Talecris Biotherapeutics Holdings Corp., and Madrid’s Obrascón Huarte Lain, which has operations in Latin America and the U.S. Later this year “there could be good opportunities in stocks whose value could start to reemerge if we finally see light at the end of the Spanish tunnel.”