The impact of the financial turmoil, far from concentrating activity in the hands of the biggest players, is apparently levelling the field. The top debt houses took a smaller slice of a smaller pie in a shrinking market. Barclays Capital has leapt to number one in volumes on the back of its takeover of Lehman Brothers in the US, edging out last year’s big three of JPMorgan, Citi and Deutsche Bank. For full-year 2007, Lehman ranked fifth and Barcap sixth, so the impact of Lehman’s US bond franchise has become immediately apparent. However, the combined group’s volumes fell by more than $200 billion to $368 billion last year, a 37% fall, compared with a decline in the total market of 27% to $4.42 trillion. Barcap/Lehman’s joint market share fell 1.3 percentage points to 8.3%....
