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Pedestrians cross the road in front of the Macquarie Group Building in Sydney, Australia, on Friday, April 27, 2012.Ian Waldie/Bloomberg

Global investment banking and financial services company Macquarie Group Ltd. is expanding its Canadian research division with two hires meant to bring more focus to consumer sector analysis.

Chris Li, who specializes in consumer companies, joins Macquarie's equity research team from Bank of America. Mike Rizvanovic, who focuses on financial stocks, comes from Veritas Investment Research, having previously worked for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Deloitte.

The pair joins Macquarie's 10 other Canadian analysts and one economic strategist – based across the country in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal – as the company continues to expand its coverage to keep pace with a changing Canadian economy. Headquartered in Australia, Macquarie has around 200 analysts covering 20 countries and more than 2,100 companies worldwide.

"Macquarie in Canada has historically been focused on resource sectors, energy and mining in particular," said Greg MacDonald, managing director and head of research for Macquarie's Canadian division. "We haven't had coverage in areas like info tech and consumer in particular. So there are a number of sectors globally that have some strategic focus for Macquarie, and consumer is one of them, and there was a hole in that sector."

With the addition of Mr. Li and Mr. Rizvanovic, along with the hire last year of technology analyst Gus Papageorgiou who covers companies such as BlackBerry Ltd. and Shopify Inc., Macquarie research will have around 150 Canadian companies under coverage. "We'll have over 80 per cent of the TSX 60 stocks under coverage … that's up from 60 to 65 per cent of TSX 60 in the past," Mr. MacDonald said. "I can't talk too much about what names will be covered ahead of us covering them, but you can assume that they're the important large cap stocks."

Mr. MacDonald said coverage of large cap consumer companies is something "a lot of our vote-focused clients are demanding."

"The way that we approach our research is that the product is very thematic focused, and there's a huge emphasis on global collaboration amongst analysts," Mr. MacDonald said. "Where [Mr. Li] can further improve the product he offers, is to be able to have people on the ground in other countries that he can source and work with on a daily basis, so that he can bring that much more insight to the Canadian client base."

Rob Carrick has a summer project for you saver's out there - challenge your reliance on big banks for the best interests rates and research some alternatives.

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