The past year was a testing one for investment banking and capital markets. The benign US interest-rate environment, which had enabled the industry to post record profits on the back of fixed-income trading, turned mid-year, leading to a climate of uncertainty.

Growth in the global economy hung in the balance; equities generally remained range-bound; the M&A revival petered out before it really got going; market volatility increasingly flat-lined; and cash-rich corporates remained on the sidelines, passing up the opportunity to stockpile cheap...Read more