Western Europe's best investment bank 2020: BNP Paribas

Western Europe’s best investment bank, BNP Paribas, is increasingly central to capital markets across the continent. That’s been particularly clear since the onset of the coronavirus crisis. 

Overall, the French firm counts more than 260 new large corporate clients since 2016. It has won many of these in markets that corporate and institutional banking head Yann Gérardin is targeting for growth: Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. 

BNPP’s pan-European advance is in evidence in both debt and equity capital markets, especially in Germany. It led a wide range of German deals, from a €2.3 billion convertible bond and accelerated bookbuild to fund Delivery Hero’s takeover of South Korea’s Woowa Brothers to smaller post-coronavirus equity financings for HelloFresh and Dragerwerk.

At the same time, the French bank’s push into the continent’s biggest capital market, the UK, has continued. It won corporate broking mandates for Easyjet and Smurfit Kappa, for example, and led accelerated bookbuilds for firms including Asos, DFS and WH Smith, after the coronavirus crash.