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It was the best start to the year for investment
banking fees since 2007, according to data for the year to Oct.
1, compiled by Thomson Reuters and Freeman Consulting.
Greater levels of confidence and the availability of cheap
financing have encouraged companies to pull the trigger on
mergers and acquisitions, lifting volumes by more 60 percent to
$2.7 trillion, while strong investor demand has driven up equity
capital market (ECM) deals by a quarter to $678.1 billion,
separate data showed this week.
The end of the third quarter featured Chinese e-commerce company
Alibaba's $25 billion initial public offering (IPO), for which
bankers earned fees of $300 million.
The deal, the world's largest ever listing, helped to lift fees
in the Asia Pacific region by 23 percent in the first nine
months. Elsewhere, fees rose by almost a third in Europe, while
in the Americas fees were 7 percent higher. Only Japan recorded
a decline, with fees down 11 percent.
Wall Street bank JPMorgan, a joint bookrunner on the Alibaba
IPO, topped the league table for fees, having earned $5 billion
by the end of the third quarter and making up 7.6 percent of the
total fee pool.
The top 10 was largely unchanged from a year earlier, with Bank
of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs maintaining second
and third places respectively.
Only RBC Capital Markets made an improvement, jumping one place
to replace UBS in tenth position.
(Reporting by Clare Hutchison; Editing by David Goodman)
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