Boston, MA 01/27/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC), the second biggest U.S. lender by assets has been expecting to issue lesser corporate bonds and hence is now turning towards advisory and stock underwriting business to compliment it.
Fixed income activity to decline
According to the head of global corporate and investment banking at the Bank of America, Christian Meissner the U.S. Federal Reserve’s attempts to cut back on their assets purchases every month is likely to result in particularly the fixed income markets to become less liquid in due course of time. In order to catch up on the declining fixed income activity, the bank will be focusing more on advising on equity capital markets as also on mergers and acquisitions. Meissner said that the bank will spend more time on the M&A and ECM areas which will henceforth be major areas of interest for the Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC).
BAC’s Lynch acquisition
In the fourth group, the Charlotte, North Carolina based Bank of America was ahead of the competitors Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) in terms of investment banking fees with Meissner’s group earning a record of $1.74 billion. With its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. last year, it had surpassed the New York based nation’s largest bank. Nevertheless, Meissner does not expect that the investment bank’s return on equity would return to pre crisis stage. He said that after the financial crisis, they could not see any market, but at this moment, there definitely was a strong one.
Race towards the top positions
The economic scenario has improved and this has led clients to take on more control which in turn is bringing out more competition in the race for top positions among Wall Street firms. Meissner estimates that the broader international merger market would lift up this year after 2013, in which maximum large scale deals involved companies out of the U.S. he commented that when record debt underwriting will drop, all investment banks will suffer a setback.
