IFR Awards 2025
For participants in (and observers of) the banking and finance industry, 2025 was a year that began with a burst of optimism, saw a burst of lunacy somewhere near the middle, before optimism was reasserted towards the end.
What started with unalloyed confidence as bankers looked forward to what they hoped would be a market-friendly Trump administration, briefly veered off course when the new president took power.
Market-friendly the administration definitely wasn’t, even if many on Wall Street were happy to overlook what would once have been anathema in order to bank the tax cuts and the promised softer regulation.
And yet while the early year excitement was briefly upended by Trump’s “liberation day” – with big capital markets transactions and transformative M&A deals put on hold as corporate chieftains surveyed the chaos and battened down the hatches – animal spirits quickly reasserted themselves.
Besides, the good news for the big investment banks was that even if those on the capital markets and advisory desks were momentarily twiddling their thumbs, their counterparts in the markets units were all hands on deck – proving once again that full-service banking operations with both bankers and traders provide a natural hedge.
The primary bond markets had barely missed a beat anyway, with record levels of issuance keeping syndicate desks busy (and the handful of IFR people who process bond market data on the edge of mutiny). And by the end of summer, the previously halting bounce back in ECM finally gathered pace. That was certainly the case in the US and even more so in Asia (where Hong Kong regulators had to tell overworked bankers to do the paperwork properly), even if the revival in Europe remained patchy.
One result was that the industry banked another bumper set of fees – around US$122bn by the end of November, according to LSEG figures, up some 8% relative to all of 2024 with a month to go and second only to the pandemic-inspired year of 2021.
By the end of the year, there were two big (sometimes intertwined) stories: the resurgence of M&A (and the financing thereof) and big tech’s embrace of the funding markets.
Giant loan market underwrites tell the story of the first. JP Morgan committed US$20bn to finance the buyout of Electronic Arts – in one of the largest underwritten buyout financings ever – while five banks (and Apollo) chucked in a combined US$113bn to back two rival bidders for Warner Bros Discovery. Wells Fargo underwrote half of one of the bridge loans for WBD – lending US$29.5bn – in what is the biggest ever acquisition financing commitment by any single bank.
This was risk appetite back with a bang.
As for the second, in just a couple of months, hyperscalers issued US$120bn of corporate bonds between them. And that may just be the start, with JP Morgan predicting US$300bn of bond issuance next year – and US$1.5trn by the end of 2030. Another US$2.3trn could be raised in equity, structured finance and private capital markets over the next five years.
If that turns out to be true, it might just be the largest fee event in banking history and will make 2025’s bumper year for IB fees look chicken feed.
So the banking and finance industry goes into 2026 with every reason to feel confident. The flywheel of M&A is turning at full speed and tech bros are relying on finance types like never before.
In other words, optimism reigns. What could possibly go wrong?