Financial Times (September 23)
“US banks have achieved a clean sweep of the top five places in global investment banking for the first time in at least six years.” This highlights “the country’s dominance of investment banking since the financial crisis.”
Tags: Banks, Dominance, Financial Crisis, Investment banking, U.S.
Institutional Investor (February Issue)
“Over the past five years, as Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland in the U.K., UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland and even Deutsche Bank have pared back their investment banking activities, U.S. banks have powered ahead in the European arena in just about every sector, including the all-important FICC and M&A advisory categories.”
Tags: Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, FICC, Investment banking, M&A, RBS, Switzerland, U.K., U.S. Europe, UBS
Euromoney (July issue)
“Market share of financial businesses vital to supporting global economic growth is concentrating rapidly into the hands of a small group of the world’s biggest banks.” During the first half of 2013, the top 10 banks commanded 56% of all investment banking fees. This “does not look a particularly welcome development, increasing as it does, the dependence of corporations, governments, large investors and other banks on just a few providers and along with it the exposure of the global financial system to risk of failure at any of these top 10.”
Tags: Banks, Economic growth, Exposure, Fees, Global financial system, Investment banking, Investors, Market share, Risk
The Economist (September 15)
With the tighter capital requirements of Basel III and more stringent regulations, investment banking has been radically downsizing. “The financial industry in London, the world’s most international banking hub, will probably have shed 100,000 jobs by the end of this year from its peak of 354,000 in 2007.” While “some of the industry’s shrinkage is overdue” and “this is broadly a good thing,” politicians and regulators need to be careful about moving to the other extreme and “regulating too fiercely.”