Just beaten last year by Warburg Dillon Read, Salomon Smith Barney wins this year's corporate bond house award for its continued and growing success worldwide.
The successful integration of the investment bank with the relationship bank and balance sheet of Citibank has been a large factor.
Although Salomon Brothers did compete before the merger with Travelers in 1997, it had the risk profile of a hedge fund, and much of the firm's resources were placed there. Travelers CEO Sandy Warner disposed of the dominance of the prop trading desks, and the 1998 merger with Citibank added the balance sheet and global relationships. And since March Salomon has been running an investment-banking joint venture in Japan with Nikko Securities.
"In the wake of the Citi-Travelers merger our origination and distribution teams have been firing on all cylinders," says Geoffrey Coley, managing director and head of US credit markets at Salomon Smith Barney "We're the only US house dominant in all three majors, dollar, yen and euro. We're now the house of choice in virtually all markets."
That may be an exaggeration, but not by much.
In 1999 the bank lead-managed one third of jumbo financings in the US, including over half of those of $2 billion or more, for companies such as AT&T, DaimlerChrysler, Electronic Data Systems and Ford - along with Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, Salomon devised Ford's global landmark securities programme, and underwrote the first deal, at $8.6