Debt capital markets investment bankers assembling at Euromoney’s two-day forum for global issuers and investors in London at the end of last month would have been unhappy had they listened in on one panel discussion. The talk turned to the difficulty of attracting talent into the conventional high-grade debt business of issuing bonds for investment-grade corporate and agency borrowers and distributing them to conventional investors.
What was once, at the start of this decade, the cutting edge of the investment banking business, when firms were key intermediaries for issuers in the capital markets, has been over-shadowed in recent years not just by M&A and equity capital markets, the traditional marquee investment banking businesses, but by principal investing, prop trading and, even...
