The more things change in investment banking the more they stay the same. At least that is the impression given by Thomson Reuters’ statistics on global fees over the past decade: until Royal Bank of Scotland dropped to 13th last year, the same banks had occupied the top 10 positions on the global fees table since Thomson Reuters started compiling the data in 2000.

The bulge-bracket nature of the top banks has kept the table static, even in the face of crises for institutions such as Citigroup, which maintained a presence well inside the top 10 despite requiring a state bailout from the US government in 2008.