Interesting year in Lev Fin where many banks have eaten huge losses. Which bank would you say has done the best this year in a tricky environment?
EMEA only (so MS eating the Twitter $ losses doesn't count).
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B
JPM > GS = CS (in the past, CS might collapse) > DB, all others are tier 2 at best. Also laf has never been MS's strong suit (even in the US), they are always a notch below JP and GS in this product for as long as I could remember (and I work at MS).
Don't agree with this.
JPM is the clear leader with CS, BNP and GS. These guys are then followed by DB, Barclays, Citi and BofA. All others are decent only in some jurisdictions but not in EMEA as a whole.
My ranking does not take prestige into account, but is solely based on business activity.
Happy to discuss.
If you are talking about vanilla laf then BNP is one of the most active in EMEA (second in volume behind only JPM). But for a large portion of their deals I would characterize as more commercial banking and less investment banking. Although reasonable people will disagree where to draw the line.
In more complex situations JPM, GS and CS had traditionally led the pack. DB is also in my view meaningfully ahead of Barc, BAML and Citi because of its balance sheet and access to German corporates / investors although a step back from GS and CS.
Citi is not great in LevFIn
agree, assuming we are talking about LBOs for private equity.
Citi has zero appetite to be competitive in leveraged loans and sponsors don't consider them a good source of funding. This has been a source of frustration for coverage bankers at Citi for years, as historically they have missed out on a ton of fees (on the flip side, it means that in this market environment they are not exposed to huge losses on unsuccessful underwritings e.g. Citrix) Therefore, the lev fin team there is full of jokers. People who don't even understand how their own model template (which is terrible) works.
They are good at high yield bonds and sub IG financing for corporates, however.
Citi LevFin was pretty successful this year so far
Yes I am pretty sure they are top 3 in EMEA LBOs in 2025.
Prior post about lack of appetite for lev fin is true historically but this has changed with new leadership.
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