Coming in a distant second was Bill Gross, founder and co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., with 16% of the vote. Next was billionaire investor George Soros with 10%, followed by Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who in 2006 predicted the financial crisis, and Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, Bloomberg reported.

Perhaps surprisingly, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan courted only 3% of the vote. But then there are those who believe it was Greenspan's drive to push interest rates way down after the 9/11 terror attacks that fed the housing bubble and subsequent fallout. His successor, Ben Bernanke, fared better, but still got fewer than 10% of the tally.

Buffett as a top pick comes even as the Oracle of Omaha himself incurred setbacks last year, including investing in the nation's third-largest oil company, ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), along with investments in two Irish banks just before the financial crisis hit and subsequently dropped in value. ConocoPhillips on Wednesday reported a 71% drop in third-quarter earnings as oil and natural-gas prices fell and said it will sell assets in Canada, the U.S., and the North Sea as it restructures itself.

On the back of those missteps, book value of Berkshire Hathaway fell by 9.6% last year, only the second time to do so since 1965, and the company's stock failed to keep pace with the benchmark S&P 500 index in the year ending Sept. 30.

Buffet nonetheless benefited after stepping knee-deep into the financial crisis last fall, making $8 billion in investments at 10% yields in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), after Lehman Bros. failed, the news agency said.

The Bloomberg poll, conducted by Selzer & Co., of Des Moines, Iowa, also asked about participants' confidence in President Barack Obama's economic team and plans, views of which dropped sharply in the past three months, Bloomberg said. Among U.S. investors, two-thirds had an unfavorable opinion of Obama, while 57% of global investors viewed him positively.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, head of the National Economic Council, also got negative grades from U.S. respondents, Bloomberg said.