By Lawrence White
LONDON, Dec 22 (Reuters) – Wall Street banks strengthened their lead in European investment banking in 2025, as clients stayed loyal despite global market turmoil and President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
Some bank bosses had anticipated European Union governments and companies would sideline American investment banks in favour of their home lenders when Trump on April 2 announced his “liberation day” tariffs.
JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dixon said the lender lost some overseas clients in the immediate aftermath.
But, while European bank share prices have risen in 2025, driven by income from higher interest rates, the region’s investment bankers failed to gain ground from Wall Street rivals, an analysis of fee data from LSEG and interviews with executives showed. In some products, such as equity offerings, they even ceded market share in Europe.
US MARKET SHARE CLIMBS NEAR ALL-TIME HIGH
U.S. banks have claimed a 37% market share in investment banking fees in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region so far this year.
That share was flat on the year before and near the all-time peak of 40%. They held firm in all products and won market share in equity offerings and mergers.
ENCROACHMENT SINCE THE FINANCIAL CRISIS
U.S. banks have steadily stolen market share from European lenders, including Deutsche Bank, Barclays and Societe Generale since the 2008 global financial crisis. European players laboured under years of restructuring and retrenchment while American rivals quickly righted themselves and built further scale. U.S. lenders’ share climbed from 31% in 2008 to the current 37%.
LEVERAGING HOME ADVANTAGE
Goldman Sachs was the leading investment bank in Europe, Middle East and Africa with a 6.8% share of overall available fees, followed by JPMorgan and France’s BNP Paribas. Citi and Morgan Stanley were fourth and fifth respectively. BNP and Deutsche Bank showed gains of 0.1% each on 2024, while Barclays and HSBC lost ground.
U.S. banks can leverage the scale and profitability of their home market to win globally. They dominated big-ticket deals worth $1 billion or more, especially in the technology, media and telecoms sector, said Amrit Shahani, partner at research firm BCG Expand.
The American banks’ gains in EMEA have been most pronounced in M&A, where they made $2.4 billion in fees to the end of the third quarter, with their market share up 2.3% from the same period in 2024 while European banks’ share slipped 2.3%, according to data from BCG Expand.
The one area where European banks outshone was in share price performance, although that in part reflects how badly European lender stocks have fared since the financial crisis.
(Reporting by Lawrence White; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Barbara Lewis)
Comments