Despite 2023 not being a year for the record books in investment banking and capital markets, clients still required careful and thoughtful advice even when they were not doing landmark deals. For its consistency and all-round excellence, JPMorgan takes the US award for best investment bank.
Globally, JPMorgan’s corporate and investment bank made more money than any other in 2023, and the bank also takes the award for the world’s best investment bank. Unsurprisingly, it performed formidably in its home market, where it makes about half its revenues.
The bank was top in practically all of Dealogic’s wallet-share rankings for US business, topping the lists in equity and equity-related transactions, long-term debt issuance and loan syndications. And the bank’s wallet share rose in M&A, equity and loans.
In pure volume terms, the bank ranked first in US debt capital markets issuance, according to Dealogic, even when excluding self-mandated deals, and was first in corporate debt issuance. It was second in equity capital markets, M&A and loans but gained share in loans and is getting closer to BofA Securities, which lost some.
Many of the biggest capital markets deals in the world in 2023 were in the US, and JPMorgan was on some of the most important. They included advising VMware, which was being sold to Broadcom for $98 billion by Silver Lake, and Horizon Therapeutics, acquired by Amgen for $28 billion.
In DCM, it was on the $31 billion eight-tranche issue from Pfizer, the biggest bond issued anywhere in the world. It also led the way in other corporate deals, leading bonds from Intel, Meta and Kenvue.
JPMorgan is setting great store by increasing the proximity of the commercial bank to the investment bank in the US and elsewhere
Kenvue was also one of the firm’s ECM highlights and the biggest IPO of a US firm, at $4.3 billion. The Nasdaq IPO of Arm Holdings, a UK chipmaker, was bigger, at $5.2 billion, and JPMorgan was also on that deal.
Despite its leading position, JPMorgan’s investment banking operation is continuing to evolve. At the start of 2024, JPMorgan chief operating officer Daniel Pinto stepped back from direct management of the corporate and investment bank after 10 years, as the bank brought its commercial bank into the same grouping to form an expanded commercial and investment bank (CIB).
The CIB is now run by co-heads Jennifer Piepszak, who was previously co-head of the community and consumer bank, and Troy Rohrbaugh, the former head of markets and securities services.
JPMorgan is setting great store by increasing the proximity of the commercial bank to the investment bank in the US and elsewhere, and sees it as a way to increase the depth of its commercial banking relationships still further.
At JPMorgan’s investor day in May 2024, Piepszak said that the expanded commercial and investment bank would allow the firm to better serve its clients as ecosystems, rather than individual companies.
“We can deepen our relationships with clients in all stages of their life cycle,” she said. “A typical middle-market client relationship often begins with payments and working capital solutions, then extends to broader financing and hedging needs, as well as early-stage fundraising.
“And as they grow in size and complexity, that can lead to an IPO and beyond – and we can do all of it.”
If that move pays off the way that JPMorgan hopes – and it would certainly be reckless to bet against it – the bank’s rivals have even more to fear.
