Investment banking once delivered juicy profits. No longer
曾赚得盆满钵满的投资银行，如今风光不再
Sep 15th 2012 | from the print edition
"THE best countercyclical indicator of the health of capital markets is when investment banks cut staff,” says a senior banker at a large American investment bank. “We always cut just before the cycle turns.” But what if the cycle doesn’t turn? An industry that once seemed to offer banks the opportunity to earn juicy returns and expand internationally is now in retreat almost everywhere.
“银行裁员的时机是资本市场健康状况最灵敏的反周期指示器，我们总是在市场周期变化之前裁员。”美国一家大型投资银行的高级银行家如是说道。但是，如果市场周期不变化怎么办？银行业曾给银行奉上了赚取丰厚回报和海外扩张的良机，但现在几乎全线收缩。
Some of this withdrawal has been going on since the crisis—the fees paid to banks for trading in capital markets as well as for advising on takeovers and sales of shares and bonds have been falling for a few years now. But lately retreat has turned to rout. Early this month Nomura, which had made a gutsy bet on expansion when it bought the European and Asian businesses of Lehman Brothers in 2008, in effect pulled the plug on its global investment-banking business. Peers express little surprise. “Nomura was dead before it started,” says the boss of one large bank. “It was a totally ill-conceived foreign expansion.”
经济危机伊始，银行业便开始萎缩。银行收取的费用呈降低之势已有几年有余，这些费用包括资本市场交易费以及兼收并购咨询费和股票债券交易费。可是，银行业最近的收缩蜕变成了溃败。本月初，在2008年收购了雷曼兄弟在欧洲和亚洲业务部门之后大胆扩张的野村集团，实际上已削减了其全球投资银行业务。同行对此略感惊奇，一位大型银行的总裁更是说道“野村出师未捷身死，应归罪于根本就考虑不周的海外扩张计划。”
Yet other banks are pulling back hard, too. Deutsche Bank, Germany’s banking champion, plans deep cuts to its investment bank, a part of the business responsible for much of its growth. Barclays is said to be considering slimming its investment bank by as much as a fifth, reversing a decade-long expansion of a business that contributes more than half of total profit. Both Barclays and Deutsche are lowering their targets for returns on equity, in Deutsche’s case to just 12% after tax, well down on the 25% pre-tax target it once aimed for.
现在，其他银行也在努力收缩业务范围。德国银行业领头羊德意志银行计划大幅裁减为其增长立下汗马功劳的投资银行业务。据称，巴克莱银行正考虑缩减多达1/5的投行业务规模，撤销扩张长达十年的业务，而该业务带来的利润占总利润的一半以上。巴克莱和德行均降低了各自的股本回报率目标，德行降低至税后12%，远低于之前税前25%的目标。
There are two main reasons for the sharp falls in profitability at investment banks everywhere. The first is that their clients are simply doing a lot less business with them. Income from trading bonds, currencies and commodities (an area of activity known in the industry as FICC) has fallen as slowing economies and turmoil in Europe have discouraged institutional investors from trading and companies from buying one another or issuing shares. Equity issuance worldwide dropped by about 30% in the first seven months of this year from a year earlier; in debt markets, bond issuance has fallen by about 8%, according to analysts at Mediobanca, an Italian bank. Number-crunchers at Deutsche Bank reckon that revenue from investment banking around the world will total some $240 billion this year, down by almost a third from 2009 (see chart).
投行盈利能力整体剧烈下滑有两个主要原因。首先是客户与银行之间业务量大量减少。由于欧洲经济的减速和乱局挫伤了机构投资者和企业的信心，他们不再愿意进行股票交易或是发行新股，所以债券、货币和大宗商品交易（这些都是行业中固定收益部门的业务）给银行带来的收入锐减。据意大利地中海银行分析师称，从去年到今年前七个月为止世界范围内新发股票量减少了约30%，债券市场中新发债券量下降了8%。德行的会计师认为：今年全世界投行所带来的收入总计约2,400亿美元，较2009年下降约1/3（如图表所示）。
The second reason is that regulations on capital and liquidity are starting to bite. These are reducing returns earned by banks as well as forcing them to shrink their balance-sheets and cut back on trading. Many banks are also starting to position themselves for proposed rules that are not yet in force, such as America’s Volcker rule, which aims to stop banks trading for their own account, and regulations that will shove over-the-counter derivatives, which command fat margins, onto clearing-houses and exchanges.
第二个原因是对资本和流动性的监管措施正开始发威。银行赚取的回报正在减少，同时监管当局要求他们缩减资产负债表规模并减少交易量。一些银行也开始主动接受已提上日程但并未实施的监管条例，诸如致力于阻止银行自营交易的沃尔克法则以及其他监管条例，限制在结算所和交易所使用带来丰厚利润的场外衍生工具。
Not everyone is gloomy: J.P. Morgan reportedly says investment banking has never been stronger. But most other banks seem to have lost their mojo. The most visible consequence of this is in headcount. London’s financial industry will have lost about 100,000 jobs by the end of this year from a peak of 354,000 in 2007, according to CEBR, an economics consultancy. New York’s financial comptroller reckons Wall Street employs almost 20,000 fewer people than before the crisis.
并非所有的人都满面愁云：据称，摩根大通认为投资银行业从没有像现在这么强大。但是大多数其他银行似乎好运不再，而最直观的后果便是雇员数量。据英国经济与商业研究中心（Centre for Economics and Business Research, CEBR）数据显示：伦敦金融业到今年年底为止将会减少100,000个职位，而在2007年雇员人数达到了顶峰354，000人。
Slashing variable costs is only half the story, however. The industry is reshaping itself in other ways, too. First, there is the decline of stand-alone investment banks, and the concomitant resurgence of universal banks, which combine investment banking with the simpler commercial-and retail-banking sort. Diversified, deposit-taking universal banks can maintain higher credit ratings and can borrow more cheaply than specialist investment banks such as Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. As credit has become scarce, moreover, universal banks have been able to demand a larger share of lucrative investment-banking business from their clients in return for offering loans.
尽管如此，大幅削减投资银行业务仅是权宜之计。而银行业也在向其他的方向转型。首先，自成体系的投行正在没落，而综合性银行相应地正在复苏；综合性银行将投资银行业务和较为简单的商业及零售银行业务整合。多元化业务，吸收储蓄的综合银行能够维系较高的信用评级，而且借贷成本较像摩根斯坦利和高盛这样的专业化投资银行低。随着信贷正变得稀缺，而且综合性银行已经有能力从赚钱的投资银行业务中获得更大的收益，这些收益来他们的客户，作为对提供贷款的回报。、
In response, investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are trying to expand into corporate lending, private banking and retail stockbroking. This week Morgan Stanley reached a deal to buy out Citigroup’s 49% stake in their Smith Barney retail-broking joint venture.
作为回应，高盛和摩根斯坦利这样的投行正在试着向企业贷款、私人银行和股票零售业务领域扩张。本周，摩根斯坦利就收购花旗银行合资公司史密斯•巴尼的股票零售业务49%的股权达成协议。
The second shift in the investment-banking landscape is a hollowing-out of the midsized banks as the very biggest in the industry grab a greater share of trading revenues. This is partly because the titans can afford the best trading systems, but also because a bank with a large share of trading has the liquidity that further increases its attractiveness as a trading counterparty. Analysts at Deutsche Bank reckon that the five leading banks in FICC won 40% of the market’s revenue in 2011, up from 36% in 2007. Smaller banks that once aspired to be global are expanding in markets closer to home instead.
投资银行业务场景的另一转变是：由于行业巨头攫取了交易收入中的大部分份额，中等规模银行面临空洞化的处境。产生这一局面部分是因为银行巨头们能够提供最好的交易体系，部分是因为占据大部分交易份额的银行具有足够的流动性，能进一步增加其作为交易方的吸引力。德行分析师认为五大银行固定收益部门占据的市场收入份额从2007年的36%上升到了2011年的40%。而曾备受鼓舞想要全球化业务的小型银行正向离本土不远的市场扩张。
The more open question is whether the industry’s geographical centre of gravity will also move, away from London and towards Wall Street and Asia. London’s natural advantages of time zone, law and language are not easily bettered. But Asian and American banks have big deposit bases to call on to finance expansion; European banks generally do not. And London’s reputation has been sullied by recent regulatory failures over issues such as the rigging of LIBOR interest rates, as well as the political backlash against investment banking that arose as a result. “London hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete in terms of wanting to be a centre of global finance,” says the boss of one large universal bank. “Singapore and New York will be the new hubs of global finance and you can’t open enough coal mines…to make up for that.”
更具争议性的问题是：银行业的地理中心是否也会转移，由伦敦转向华尔街和亚洲。伦敦具有时区，法律和语言等天然优势，而这些优势并不容易被超越。但是亚洲和美国的银行有巨大的存款基础来支持金融扩张，这一点是欧洲银行通常所不具有的。而且伦敦的声誉受到了严重打击，这都是拜最近监管不力（比如伦敦同业银行拆放利率操纵丑闻）和对投资银行进行政治打压所赐。一位综合性银行的高管说道：“伦敦想要成为全球金融中心的野心已经终止。新加坡和纽约将会成为新的全球金融枢纽，而且为了达到那个目的，你不可能火力全开。”
