Deutsche Bank’s global head of debt capital markets, Miles Millard, succinctly weighs up the importance of his speciality. “The last couple of years has shown us just how increasingly important the debt capital market has become as a source of capital for all types of borrowers, in all regions of the world,” he says. “It is an absolute key pillar to our global markets franchise.” By contrast, just a few short years ago, in those sunny pre-crisis years, derivatives bankers were the stars of the show, rising through the management ranks the fastest, the geniuses of financial product innovation and the generators of turbo-charged returns.
Regulation is about to clip their wings. And, as the financial markets come to grips with the real level of global indebtedness, from a sovereign, bank, and corporate perspective, the public debt markets are becoming more and more the key transmission mechanism that can disperse and manage those liabilities. For DCM bankers, this is their time.