Awards for Excellence 2016
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Also shortlisted: |
Citi |
Goldman Sachs |
HSBC |
Morgan Stanley |
The business of financing, for so long dominated by specific products or simply the provision of a large balance sheet, is undergoing a big shift. The mantra now is to be product-agnostic and solutions-driven. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the financing franchise of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
The bank needed all of its integration and product expertise over the review period for these awards, which included some very ugly market conditions. A surge in high-profile strategic financings for transformational mergers and acquisitions meant that firms had to deliver across a range of products and markets, taking advantage of narrow market windows. At the same time, it had to be able to provide bridge financing of sufficient scale to ensure that the number of parties involved and any potential information leakage could be kept to a minimum.
“At times like this, the commoditization comes out of the business and the advisory aspect of financing really comes into its own,” says Christian Meissner, global head of corporate and investment banking at BAML.