Overall standings and sector wins
J.P. Morgan's position count grew by nearly 50 percent. The bank appeared in every sector with publishable results other than Investment-Grade Strategy. Its winning streak began with the ranking's inaugural edition in 2011; Institutional Investor's later coverage recorded an eighth consecutive overall victory in 2018.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch increased its tally from 14 positions to 17, though it moved from joint first place in 2015 to second in 2016. Barclays and Deutsche Bank remained tied for third, each with 11 positions. Citi and Royal Bank of Scotland shared fifth with five apiece; in 2015, that tie had been between Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland, also with five each.
The distribution of sector titles differed from the overall standings. Bank of America Merrill Lynch accounted for five of the 21 sector champions, followed by Barclays and Deutsche Bank with four each and J.P. Morgan with three.
The survey's reach
Institutional Investor's annual assessment of Europe's leading sell-side bond and credit analysts drew votes from 750 buy-side participants at 373 institutions. Those institutions managed a combined $6.4 trillion in European fixed-income assets.
The published roster included 78 analysts and team leaders across 12 firms, out of an eligible field of 322 analysts at 22 firms. Information about eligible analysts and firms absent from the roster was available from the Institutional Investor Research Group.
The 2016 edition covered 21 sectors, compared with 18 in 2015.
Where voters concentrated their attention
Fixed-Income Strategy attracted the largest number of voters. Economics ranked next, followed by Investment-Grade Strategy, Interest Rate Strategy and High-Yield Strategy.
Deutsche Bank won three of those five categories: James Reid and Francis Yared's team led Fixed-Income Strategy, Mark Wall's team led Economics, and Reid's team took High-Yield Strategy. Royal Bank of Scotland won the other two, with Alberto Gallo's team in Investment-Grade Strategy and the team led by Giles Gale and Andrew Roberts in Interest Rate Strategy.
A separate measure, votes cast for teams within each sector, put Reid and Yared's first-place Fixed-Income Strategy team at the top. Next was Royal Bank of Scotland's Alberto Gallo and Andrew Roberts team, which placed second in that sector. They were followed by Wall's winning Economics team, Citi's Jeremy Hale team, a Fixed-Income Strategy runner-up, and Reid's winning High-Yield Strategy team.
Economics also had the largest group of runners-up, with four. Manufacturing/General Industrials in the High Yield category had three.
First-time winners and leaders across sectors
Seven teams reached first place for the first time, four of them at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Alexander Batchvarov's team won Asset-Backed Securities Strategy; Philip Galdi and Alberto Ruiz-Sena's team won Bond Markets Indexes; Emmanuel Owusu-Darkwa and Navann Ty's team won Basic Materials in High Yield; and Ty's team won the newly introduced High-Yield Health Care category.
The other first-time winners were Caio Natividade's Quantitative Analysis team at Deutsche Bank, Hans-Guenter Redeker's Currency & Foreign Exchange team at Morgan Stanley, and Daniel Vaun's Utilities team at J.P. Morgan.
Ty was also one of four analysts leading more than one sector-winning team. In addition to sharing leadership of High-Yield Basic Materials with Owusu-Darkwa and leading Health Care alone, Ty co-led the winning High-Yield Retailing/Consumer Products team with Thomas Gibney. Ty also headed the second-place Investment Grade Basic Materials team.
At Barclays, Christophe Boulanger led the winning High-Yield Manufacturing/General Industrials team and shared leadership of its Investment Grade counterpart with Darren Hook. Hook's other winning team was Investment Grade Basic Materials, co-led with Margaret O'Neal van Loon. Hook and O'Neal van Loon also jointly managed a High-Yield Basic Materials runner-up.
Deutsche Bank's Reid combined his winning roles in Fixed-Income Strategy, alongside Yared, and High-Yield Strategy, which he led alone, with leadership of the second-place Investment-Grade Strategy team.
Established winners extend their records
Three teams recorded a sixth consecutive sector victory: Morgan Stanley's Jacqueline Ineke team in Banking & Financial Services, Deutsche Bank's Wall team in Economics, and Deutsche Bank's Reid and Yared team in Fixed-Income Strategy.
Barclays extended its first-place run in both Manufacturing/General Industrials categories to four years. Boulanger led the High Yield team, while Boulanger and Hook shared leadership in Investment Grade.
At J.P. Morgan, Rishad Ahluwalia and Saul Doctor's Credit Derivatives team won for a fifth consecutive year. Andrew Webb's team in Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT), High Yield, recorded its fifth victory in six years. Barclays' Daniel Rekrut team won Investment Grade TMT for the third time since 2012.
Royal Bank of Scotland's Gale and Roberts team secured a third straight Interest Rate Strategy title, while Gallo's Investment-Grade Strategy team won for a second consecutive year.
Both Retailing/Consumer Products winners repeated their 2015 victories: the High Yield team led by Gibney and Ty at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and the Investment Grade team led by Claire Poncet Dumont at Crédit Agricole Corporate Investment Bank.
The ECB outlook accompanying the ranking
In coverage published alongside the 2016 survey, analysts discussed their expectations for further European Central Bank stimulus. Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Michael Maras anticipated a third round of quantitative easing by the second half of 2016.
Deutsche Bank's Reid described additional stimulus at the ECB's March 10, 2016 meeting as "inevitable." Both comments were forecasts at the time, not reports of policy decisions that had already occurred.
