Cathal Deasy's Barclays M&A bankers are on fire, despite the cuts
Since coming in as co-head of Barclays' investment bank in January, Cathal Deasy has hit the ground running. Revenues came in £400m above forecasts in what the and the bank describes as its "second best quarter on record." Barclays has performed well across a number of divisions, including areas other banks faltered in.
Chief among them is M&A which rose 15%; Barclays is the only major bank so far to report a rise in revenues there. The same is true for ECM revenues, though they only rose 6%.
That doesn't mean all areas of the investment bank performed equally well. Equities slumped, falling 33% in the second worst performance of the banks this quarter. DCM revenues fell too, but so did everyone else's and comparatively, Barclays' fell the least.
Despite this great performance, Barclays have been making headcount cuts so far this year. They aren't all focused in the underperforming divisions either, some M&A bankers are being let go too.
Its unlikely that these strong results can solely be attributed to Deasy. It is more likely to be related to the massive hiring done by his predecessors, JF Astier and John Miller. However, with spaces at the bank opening up, we could see Deasy start to make some big hires of his own.
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