Barclays to Chase More CEOs After Getting Shut Out of Big Deals

Barclays Plc is looking to court more corporate chieftains in order to advise them on dealmaking and capital markets activity after the British lender was absent from some of the biggest deals in the third quarter. 

Barclays has improved its standing with private equity firms, which has helped buoy its advisory revenue in recent quarters, Anna Cross, Barclays’ finance director, said on a conference call with journalists. Still, the firm has more progress to make to capture more equity capital markets and corporate advisory mandates alike, she said. 

“There’s more to do on M&A with corporates — we recognize that, and it’s a continued focus,” Cross said. “On ECM, we didn’t participate in many of the large deals in the quarter, and, indeed, some of those have been pushed out into Q4 so we we are focused on the pipeline for that business.”

Barclays’ IPO bankers brought in £71 million of revenue in the third quarter. While that missed estimates, it was up 11% from the same period a year ago. The firms’ dealmakers generated £196 million in income, topping expectations. 

Barclays has been known as a fixed income and debt underwriting powerhouse. But the latest results come as Barclays looks to shift that narrative by investing more heavily in both equities underwriting and advisory as part of a broader plan to boost returns across the firm. 

“The ECM and M&A stuff is not directly linked to capital at all,” Chief Executive Officer CS Venkatakrishnan said on the call. “It was dominated by a few large deals, which we were not fortunate to be in. And that’s the question we’ll ask ourselves, which is, ‘How do you get into some of those lost deals?’”

The firm’s stock traders missed expectations during the quarter, generating just £689 million. That was roughly flat with the same period a year ago and meant the British lender underperformed its Wall Street rivals.