Greenwich Associates released its annual list of top leaders in the U.S. institutional fixed-income trading market today, revealing a deadlock for first between Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan with each firm holding an 11.5% overall market share.
Goldman Sachs and Citi were close behind in second and third, holding overall market shares of 10.5% and 10.2% respectively.
In securitized products, Barclays was awarded the top spot with a market share of 12.7%. Bank of America Merrill Lynch was second with a 12.0% market share, and Credit Suisse followed in third with an 11.8% share.
The press release from Greenwich Associates showed that approximately 80% of U.S. fixed-income trading volume is in rates products, including MBS passthroughs. Deutsche Bank and Barclays Capital again tied as the top leader in this sector, each with an 11.6% market share.
JPMorgan was a close second with an 11.2% market share, and Goldman Sachs and Citi once again filled out the top five leaders with 10.9% and 10.4% shares, respectively.
In addition to market share leaders, Greenwich Associates also named “Greenwich Quality Leaders”. The press release said that to be awarded this title, a firm must far exceed their competitors through outstanding ratings from institutional clients “by a statistically significant margin”.
BofA Merrill Lynch was named the quality leader in both U.S. fixed-income sales and U.S. fixed-income trading, while Barclays Capital and JPMorgan tied as the quality leaders of U.S. fixed-income research.
Tom Hamilton, managing director and head of securitized products trading at Barclays, said that the biggest take away from the results of Greenwich’s study is the importance of bringing a complete solution to clients across distribution, research and modeling, among other things.
"We are involved across the spectrum of securitized products, and our government advisory work for agencies such as the [Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.] and the [National Credit Union Administration] has been a meaningful franchise builder as well,” he said.
Hamilton added that the U.S. securitization business is undergoing many changes and transitioning into a new world in terms of restructuring housing and commercial mortgage financing.
Doing business during this point in the country’s economic recovery means that, “at the end of the day, you have to deliver on everything — it’s just not about providing balance sheet, prices or prepayment models. A securitized products business has to hit on all of those things,” he said.
He added that it's interesting that a domestic arm of a U.K. bank was selected as having the biggest market share in the securitized institutional fixed-income trading market. "This shows Barclays' commitment to the U.S. and to the securitization business for the long haul," Hamilton said.
Currently, he mentioned that Barclays is selectively adding to its different securitization lines of business and is in the process of a CMBS build-out, which he characterized as "methodical" and occurring over a long period of time.
