Thursday, March 20, 2014

Banking: Europe's Flowmonsters Are Losing Ground (BARC; RBS; CS; UBS)

From MoneyBeat:

How Europe’s Flowmonsters Are Losing Ground 
Analysts have already started reining in their forecasts for first quarter U.S. bank earnings, saying  the slump in fixed income, currency and commodities trading is showing no signs of going away.

But now a wide-ranging report on investment banks suggest Europe’s biggest ‘flow’ houses are set for an even tougher time than their U.S. peers.

Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Credit Suisse lost 5% of their market share in global investment banking revenues to U.S. rivals last year, according to an annual report from Morgan StanleyMS +3.08% and Oliver Wyman. The report, poignantly, questions whether European banks have lost their potential to be global “flowmonsters”–essentially banks that trade huge volumes at tight spreads....MORE