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2008 League Tables show the same agents at the top of a smaller heap…

By Grant Catton, PPL Blog

February 17, 2009

The 2008 private placement league tables hit the wires last week and, to no one’s surprise, Banc of America Securities (now Bank of America – Merrill Lynch) was tops again. In fact, this year’s top five private placement agents are the exact same five banks that dominated the charts last year, with the slight exception that Citigroup and Barclays Capital traded the fourth and fifth slots, with Barclays moving into fourth. JPMorgan Securities and RBS Greenwich Capital again captured second and third place in the tables, published and distributed each year by ThomsonReuters.

 

The real story this year, however, is not simply the order of finish, as it is in most years. This year the white elephant in the room is the total traditional private placement volume chart, which shows volume was down 30% from 2007; a total of $28.11 billion last year, versus 40.28 billion in 2007. This doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise to anyone who follows our market closely, but it does serve as a stark reminder of a rough 4Q08 that everyone would just as soon forget.

 

“The final number really reflects the fact we had an almost total shutdown in the fourth quarter,” said a buyside source. In the fourth quarter of 2008, $919 million worth of volume priced in the private market, versus $5.89 billion in the third quarter, and $6.34 billion for the fourth quarter of 2007.

 

***

 

JPMorgan deserves a round of applause—or at least some recognition by this blog—for holding steady year-over-year numbers despite the downturn..

 

The bank posted $6.128 billion in volume led last year, versus $6.282 billion in 2007, a drop of only $154 million, or roughly 2%. BAS-ML, on the other hand, reported $8.631 billion last year, versus $10.379 billion in 2008, a drop of almost 17%. While still finishing in third place, RBS’s total dropped from $6.187 billion in 2007—neck and neck with JPM—to $2.775 billion last year, a drop of 55%.

 

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