So far this year, Abu Dhabi has brought $5bn in one outing and Qatar $9bn. Qatar’s bond was easily the largest ever CEEMEA bond. Saudi Arabia is expected to issue over $10bn later this year.
But these deals are outliers. When a more usual CEEMEA bond issuer, typically looking for $500m to $1bn, looks at the league tables it is to help them evaluate whether banks have the requisite experience in placing bonds. They see it as an indication of how much trust other issuers have in certain banks as well as how much those issuers have been lent by those banks.
But does ability in placing a $9bn Qatar sovereign bond point towards how competent a bank will be in selling a bank subordinated debt? Or even a CEE sovereign? Arguably not. Within banks, too, the revenue from these jumbo deals gives an odd view of the business — the fees on these large sovereign deals are typically tiny in percentage terms (though large in absolute terms).
League tables based on volumes are every year skewed towards the lead managers of the biggest bonds. When AB InBev sold a €13.25bn six tranche note in March, the largest ever euro–denominated corporate bond, that too will have affected the corporate bond league tables. But at least in that market, the issuers that will be looking at those league tables are other corporate borrowers.
In the CEEMEA market, league tables will need to become more granular to be of any use, and start to focus on the number of deals as well as the volumes.
None of this, however, means the banks at the top of the current CEEMEA league tables aren't the best in market.
Citi, the leader, was on the Abu Dhabi trade and not the Qatar deal, but has also been on the largest number of CEEMEA bonds this year — no one is disputing that its place at the top is a rightful one.
But Standard Chartered Bank, which has been on none of the jumbo trades so far, is in 11th place, despite having been on the joint fourth largest number of individual deals. It would be tough to argue that it has not been in the flow of this year’s primary business, despite having a position outside the top 10 spot by volume.
A bank may well be the best in the market and be at the top of the league tables this year. But it would be an error to think that those two things are the same.