Bankers claim that they ignore league tables but their opinions tend to correlate very strongly with their ranking in them. When they are near the bottom, the tables are unimportant but when they reach the top, they are a testament to their world-beating capabilities.
With this year's downturn in equity issuance every deal is making a difference, which works to the advantage of firms that can use their equity capital market teams to sell their own shares. Deutsche Bank's recent disposal of its own €142.4m ($142.4m) stake in Continental, the German tyre manufacturer, took the bank to the top of the league tables for European equity capital markets issuance, according to Dealogic, the investment banking research firm. The German bank has raised €10.7bn so far this year from ECM deals and received €2.1bn league table credit from leading its own share sales â all part of its strategy to sell its industrial holdings. Without its own deals, Deutsche would fall to second place in the tables behind Goldman Sachs.
