Best global transaction services house:
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Also shortlisted: Citi Deutsche Bank HSBC |
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In global transaction banking, as elsewhere, Bank of America Merrill Lynch is reaping the benefits of a more unified culture that has senior Merrill investment bankers working closely and collaboratively with their corporate and transaction banking brethren to win banking business. Such is the relationship between them, business is flowing the other way too. It hasn’t been easy. There has been blood. But it does appear to be working.
“It is literally every single person trying to help to win a deal,” says Paul Simpson, head of global transaction services at BAML in New York.
“Last year we had 25 deals that executive vice chairmen and senior investment bankers helped win for us. We had all the capability ourselves…don’t get me wrong. But the last stretch is putting that call into the CFO to push it over the line. And that is a huge differentiator.”
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Simpson adds that every single year the edict from the top is that everyone needs to be selling annuity based businesses because “you’ll never pay all the bills through M&A alone”.
It’s an edict that comes from Tom Montag, co-chief operating officer, who is also directly involved in co-ordinating and honing the relationships across banking businesses, says William Newman, head of North America global treasury solutions.
This is important because banks are looking to maximize the relationship they have with their blue chip clients in an effort to increase wallet share. By working more closely than ever before, banks have a greater chance to deliver this and help lift shareholder returns.
Time will tell if this will prove successful for BAML and its shareholders, but the future is looking bright.
It is for this collaborative culture, together with a bold growth and partnership strategy based on working with truly global companies in the regions and countries they need to be in, as well as technological innovation and delivering the type of service and infrastructure treasurers need, that BAML wins best global transaction services house award for 2014.
The US bank would be the first to admit it has nothing of the geographical footprint or quantum of banking relationships that Citi or HSBC have with companies around the world. Nor does it have the corporate penetration or euro clearing capabilities that Deutsche Bank has in Europe.
But what it may lack there, it more than makes up for in other areas. And, importantly, BAML is not trying to bank as many companies as it can throughout the world. It is selectively targeting truly global companies and realistically doing as much as it can with them in the markets where they need to be. This does not mean setting up local banking operations. It does mean striking strategic partnerships with a select group of local and regional banks to service the needs of BAML’s corporate customers.
“A partner bank means vastly different things to different institutions,” says Ivo Distelbrink, head of GTS, Asia-Pacific and Japan at BAML. “For us it means our documentation, our counterparty risk, our service, our operating model, our front end portal. To all intents and purposes, it’s a BAML experience. Very few banks run partner banks that way.”
But is running this model not making treasurers’ infrastructure needs more complex?
“It’s impossible to create standardized infrastructure globally. Nobody has it and no one is going to have it,” says Percy Batliwala, head of global sales, GTS. “You need to have a plug and play mechanism. What’s important is technology and how you interlink, create and deliver the final solution to the client.”
In sum, global corporate treasurers need transparency on their transactions and they need liquidity, and the ability to move money from one country to the next.
“We have built capabilities for global multinationals to accomplish this while enabling them to work in a multibank environment.”
Just as powerful, says Distelbrink, is BAML’s focus. “We want to cover those clients which are truly global,” he says. “By doing this we can run a different operating and service model: one that is more bespoke, more high touch, more solution-oriented.”
For Jennifer Boussuge, head of GTS, EMEA, at BAML in London, the bank and its businesses have been evolving in the past couple of years and this year could be a watershed. “I do feel we are now there,” she says, “executing and delivering on everything that we have planned.”
