Sometimes a franchise is suited to a moment. And in an awards period that began with the catastrophe unfolding in Ukraine, ended with a meltdown in US regional banking, and was accompanied throughout by eye-watering rate hikes, clients had no shortage of demands of their investment banks.
One thing they needed was support – whether through credit, capital, research, trading or advice. But what they needed perhaps more than anything else was an investment bank that could make sense of the world for them.
“Clients needed banking partners that had differentiated insights into the market, and that meant a global platform across products, with a more holistic view of how the world was unfolding,” says Derek Neldner, chief executive of RBC Capital Markets, Canada’s best investment bank.
The macro environment obviously made some traditional measures of success in investment banking – deal volumes in particular – look meagre in comparison with some previous years.