Fixed-income losses due to declining prices and the need to pare back balance sheets to meet regulatory leverage limits has some banks scrambling to reposition their FICC businesses to ride out the storm. One area that may suffer as a result is banks’ willingness to support client deals in the aftermarket. While client business is one of the last areas to feel the pinch in most situations, the current parlous state of Wall Street fixed-income businesses means it could nonetheless suffer.
According to International Financing Review, Barclays and Deutsche Bank have announced plans to cut their balance sheets by a combined Eur400 billion to meet new regulatory leverage limits. Other big bond houses are expected to see revenues suffer as the prices of their inventoried bonds and trading volumes overall have declined since May, when the markets began to price in a tapering of quantitative easing.
IFR reports that Barclays’ fixed-income revenue was down GBP500 million from a year earlier in July and August alone. The bank’s FICC business accounted for 62 percent of its revenues in 2012, while Deutsche’s debt trading brought in 59 percent of its revenues. RBS, Citigroup and Nomura are under similar pressure, although they do not have to cut their balance sheets as much as Barclays and Deutsche, according to IFR.
Combined with the decline in FICC business is the ongoing fallout from the divestment of prop trading businesses required by the Volcker Rule. This has already had some effect on aftermarket liquidity, according to traders, although high levels of demand for fixed income in the first half of this year from non-bank institutional investors has masked the effect.