Lehman Brothers
Last year, Deutsche Bank took this award largely because it had managed to replicate its success in Europe in the much larger US asset-backed market. This year, Lehman Brothers has managed to achieve the opposite, coming out top by volume in the US ABS market and dramatically improving its market share in Europe and Asia.
It is also dominant in the global ABCP market, ranking number one in 2003 according to Moody’s market share league table. “The innovation in the ABCP market has been phenomenal and some of the biggest growth in this market is coming out of Europe,” says Nelson Soares, managing director, head of US structured finance origination. “I think we’re going to see more of that for the rest of 2004 and 2005.”
One of Lehman Brothers’ big advantages in ABS is that it has a unified syndicate and structured product sales force, which means that its distribution efforts really are global. “We’ve got a globally integrated ABS business across sales, trading and research,” explains Amany Attia, managing director and head of structured finance at the bank. “We have to be able to talk to clients about distribution in euros, dollars or sterling, for example.”