Awards for Excellence 2016
Overall, Dealogic’s revenue league table in western Europe makes the fall of previously pre-eminent regional investment banks painfully obvious in the 12 months covered by these awards. Examples of European firms that are not losing market share to US rivals, even in their national home markets, are rare.
That fact makes the progress at Barclays, which wins the best investment bank award, particularly remarkable. Its ambitions in investment banking, perhaps, were always going to take time, even after its 2009 acquisition of Lehman Brothers. Its mantra now is that its goals should be realistic. Outside the UK, that means recognizing that trying to outrun French banks in France, for example, would be foolhardy.
The post-crisis economic and regulatory environment has also forced a reprioritization of capital and returns over revenues; concerns that come into every deal and hire it does. The result of those sometimes painful lessons is already evident in the investment bank’s return on equity, which doubled during the awards period at group level, while profit before tax rose 16%.
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Sam Dean, Barclays: realistic goals make it a winner |
The bank has also demonstrated momentum in its investment banking revenues.