Life for Europe’s equity capital markets (ECM) bankers is looking up. Last year, their market went from strength to strength. According to investment banking data provider Dealogic, ECM volumes for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) rose 63% to €170bn, the highest total for the region since 2009. The supply of initial public offerings more than doubled to €29bn.
“We saw a strong recovery in 2013,” says Richard Cormack, co-head of ECM for EMEA at Goldman Sachs. “It was the first year since the crisis in which there was a strong performance, broadly speaking, in every quarter.”
