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5 days ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
There are many distinctive buildings in New York City but few are as memorable as 45 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan. This Art Deco masterpiece from the 1930s is one of the rare structures whose interior is as elegant as its exterior. A banker who needs to impress a client (or journalist) is certainly lucky if they have the option to host them for a meeting there. And that is what Steve Valentino, co-president of Rockefeller Global Investment Banking, does when he meets The Banker.
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1 week ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
When mergers and acquisitions bankers come to reflect on 2025 they will probably divide the year into pre and post “liberation day”. Before April 2 deal sentiment was improving and the valuation gap between buyers and sellers of companies seemed to be narrowing. This second point is critical for private equity funds that need to sell companies in their portfolios, or have them listed on the stock market, and return money to investors.
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1 week ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
Some joint ventures between banks and alternative asset managers could face pressure
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2 weeks ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
When Phil Roberts walks into a room, the first thing you might notice is his tie. The tasteful but not overpowering colour he wears for our meeting is a calming ocean blue. The genteel atmosphere it evokes is a far cry from Roberts’s graduate job as a chemical engineer in a coal power station, where he was involved in flue gas desulfurisation.
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1 month ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
Nearly three-quarters of dealmakers feel positive about mergers and acquisitions for the next 12 months despite Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, according to research. A survey by law firm Taylor Wessing and Bayes Business School looked at the sentiment of dealmakers across regions and by sector from now until 2030.
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1 month ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
In boxing they say that a good, big fighter will always beat a good, little one as size overwhelms opponents. The same principle applies in investment banking where scale really does help you win. Boutique institutions, such as Moelis, Evercore, PJT Partners, Lazard and Houlihan Lokey, however, would argue otherwise. They aim to be nimble where a Goldman Sachs or Citigroup might be slow.
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1 month ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
Ask five economists and you will get five different answers, is how the joke goes. A version of this applies to how banks devise their private credit offering: there are many ways to do it. Figuring out the right one is critical for investment banks given how many of them want to either launch new private credit ventures or upgrade existing ones. It is such a hotbed of activity that there seems to be a new announcement every other month.
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2 months ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
In the run up to the global turmoil unleashed by the Trump administration’s tariffs last week, global equity capital market issuance hit the highest it has been in the first quarter of any year since 2021. On April 2 President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs that drove shares in major US banks downwards.
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2 months ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
The political and regulatory stars are aligning to reform an obscure but important regulation that limits how much US Treasuries major Wall Street lenders can buy. It is called the supplementary leverage ratio and stipulates that large banks maintain 5 per cent of their capital against all bank assets, regardless of risk. It is calculated by dividing a bank’s common equity by its total assets.
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2 months ago | 
thebanker.com | Michael Klimes
Large transatlantic mergers and acquisitions will not happen until there is more certainty on what the Trump administration’s tariff policies are, according to several Citigroup dealmakers. Citi’s divisional heads for the investment, corporate and commercial banks in Europe said geopolitics hangs over all types of banking activities, with clients asking questions about how to allocate capital in response to US tariffs.
