With credit analysts predicting that overall levels of investment-grade corporate issuance in Europe will end the year even lower than they had previously expected, banks are turning their attention to the more lucrative and active European high-yield market.
Deutsche Bank and CSFB have between them cleaned up almost 40% of market share for European and international high-yield deals this year to date, according to Dealogic, but other banks are trying to take a bigger slice of the pie.
SG announced in mid-September that it was going to build out a European high-yield business over the next few months, focusing in particular on the media, telecom and leveraged market. It will be hiring a new team of high-yield capital markets, sales, trading and research staff, to complement the high-yield team the bank already has in New York.
At the end of September, BNP Paribas announced the appointment of Youssef Khlat as head of the high-yield capital market business in Europe and Michael Johnson as co-head of leveraged finance in the UK, what the bank described as part of a targeted expansion of these business areas. Bank of America is also expanding in Europe — it has hired three new bankers into its new leveraged finance business on the back of recent high-yield deal flow.