LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuters) – Global investment banking fees in the year to date have reached their highest since just before the financial crisis, coming in at $76.1 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data.
The global fee pool is up 14 percent to a ten-year high in the first nine months of 2017, compared to the same period last year, driven by a strong rise in fees from capital markets activity.
The Americas accounted for around 50 percent of the total at $38 billion, the data showed, up 11.6 percent from a year ago.
In Europe, banking fees rose 19 percent to a two-year high of $17.5 billion, while fees from Japan reached their highest level since Thomson Reuters records began in 2000 at $4.1 billion.
U.S. banks are in the top five positions in the global investment banking fee rankings with a 27.9 percent share, down from a high of 44.3 percent in 2001.
JPMorgan is on track to retain its spot at the top of the fee table in 2017, earning $5.0 billion so far compared to Goldman Sachs in second place with $4.4 billion.
Barclays was the best performing European bank, bringing in $2.6 billion.
Fees from equity capital markets business rose 42 percent to $16.6 billion over the period, which includes a 91 percent increase in fees from initial public offerings to $5.4 billion.
However, uncertainty surrounding the impact of new U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies meant mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity fell, causing a 1 percent slip in M&A fees to $20.1 billion.
The biggest fall was in the United States, where M&A activity fell 12 percent in the first nine months of the year compared with the same period in 2016.
M&A activity for European targets totalled $629.3 billion during the first nine months of 2017, an increase of 29 percent compared to 2016, when Britain’s vote to leave the European Union subdued dealmaking. (Reporting by Clara Denina. Editing by Jane Merriman)
[“Source-reuters”]
