Citigroup’s massive stock sale this week may not have been a big hit with investors, but it helped its capital markets bankers look a lot more successful this year.
Dealogic is giving Citi sole credit for running the firm’s own $20.5 billion stock offering, the largest in corporate American history. That munificence helped the bank leapfrog rivals Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse in the equity capital markets league tables this year, jumping two spots to sixth place with $57.5 billion in offerings.
Strip away this week’s sale, and Citi’s market share drops from 6.5 percent to 4.7 percent over all.
For United States equity offerings, the sale propels Citi to fourth place from fifth, surpassing Morgan Stanley with $34 billion in completed sales. Remove this week from the equation, and Citi’s bookrunning market share drops to 7.7 percent from a more impressive 13.7 percent.
Citi wasn’t the only beneficiary of self-led offering deal inflation. Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit early this month took sole credit for the Charlotte-based bank’s $19.6 billion follow-on offering. That helped Bank of America bypass UBS and raise its ranking to fourth from fifth on Dealogic’s global equity capital markets league table this year.
Thomson Reuters does not allow firms to count self-led offerings, so Citi sits at eighth place instead of sixth on its own global league tables for the year.
So it might be safe to bet that Citi won’t be citing Thomson Reuters data in its pitch books.
– Cyrus Sanati
