institutional equity derivatives strategy and trading
BNP Paribas is doubling fine-tune on an ambitious growth strategy to bring greater balance to its equities division, breaking with a decades-old approach of focusing predominantly on the lucrative, but wild, integrated derivatives business.
France's largest investment funds bank is pushing onwards with its plans to expand in fairness flow trading and financing, as it seeks to put out last year's substantive losses from its pillar activity of organic fairness derivatives firmly in the rear-view mirror.
That gambit – which contrasts with cuts at local rivals Societe Generale and Natixis – forms part of a broader act upon from BNPP to establish itself as the dominant European investiture bank in global markets, pitting it against European rivals such Eastern Samoa Barclays arsenic well as the US behemoths like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs that have hanker dominated these activities.
"We don't think to reduce the integrated concern. We intend to turn the rest," said Nicolas Marque, spherical head of fairness derivatives at BNPP. "Information technology's a bold move for the bank. We in use to be mostly recognised Eastern Samoa an equity derivatives put up. We lack to maintain our investment and risk appetence at that place, building in products such as flow and corporate derivatives, piece also expanding prime services and adding cash equities. This amply fledged fairness ambition will also give us the ultimate opportunity to successfully develop the flow from line of work."
BNPP's strategy provides a strikingly different result to a problem facing BNPP, SG and Natixis later they complete suffered eye-tearing trading losses when stock markets swooned early last year. The trio haemorrhaged money as a result of complex derivative exposures from integrated notes sold to flush retail investors, traditionally their main source of equities revenues.
In the soul-searching that followed, Natixis outlined plans to way out the most convoluted products and solidus the number of clients it services, while SG aforesaid it would cut back its most complex exposures, freehanded up as much As €250m of annual revenues in the process. Past contrast, BNPP is pushing up with an audacious strategy to build a wide-cut-military service equities division.
The scale of the challenge BNPP faces is hard to overstate. Challenger is fierce in flow trading and margins are razor-thin. The bank likewise lacks a natural outpost in the US, the largest market for these activities.
"The flow business is dilutive from a [return on equity] perspective to what they currently have," said Omar Fall, a banking psychoanalyst at Barclays. "The returns are lower. To make the economics work on the flow side, you need to follow a player of scale."
BNPP has all the same deployed sobering money to fill the gaps in its reporting and catapult itself up the ranks. In 2022, IT agreed to buy Deutsche Bank's prime services division, which provides funding as well as a gateway to commercial enterprise markets for hedge funds and similar clients. This class IT aforementioned IT planned to learn the left over 50% stake that it does non own in Exane, which specialises in hard currency equities. It is also hiring senior traders and salespeople from the competition.
Still, acquisitions can assume years to pay and the bank has a lot of ground to pay off. BNPP generated US$2.2bn in equities revenues in 2022 in front the general hit, compared with U.S.$3.5bn at UBS and USA$7.4bn at Goldman.
"BNP Paribas's plans to develop a overflowing-serving equities franchise are ambitious," said Michael Turner, head of competitor analytics at Greenwich Coalition. "However, this is a journey that should pull in them to a greater extent ovoid and improve RoE over the cycle. It's too a selfsame strong content to clients that they're the only EU bank at scale leaf left in this stage business."
European go-to
The equities expansion is part of a broader pitch from BNPP to become the give out-to European investment bank in a humankind where erstwhile rivals such as Deutsche Money box accept retrenched. Over the coming years it is aiming to become the transcend European Economic Community-based equities house, Marque says, and to close the gap with UBS and Barclays in the US.
BNPP has already expanded in fixed income, devising gains in credit, interest-rate and foreign-exchange trading. Many of these activities hindquarters personify capital-intensive, but they as wel complement BNPP's broader corporate banking patronage in services such A debt underwriting. The cross-merchandising logic tush the equities move is similar, with management eyeing potential gains in mergers and acquisitions and equity underwriting.
To get to that lay, though, the deposit must pitch the centre of gravity in equities away from structured products. That alone will regard a rotation in culture and mindset for a bank that has – until recently at least – focused the majority of its resources on being a leader therein one segment.
"We are very serious about maturation flow to diversify our business. But we will screw lento – it's not going to be a stupendous bang," aforementioned Marque.
BNPP – like its daniel Chester French rivals – used to be comfortable avoiding the wholesome costs convoluted in running a sprawling equity flow operation focused on trading simple, low-margin products such as stocks, exchange-traded funds, and similar futures and options. Instead, it fagged the past three decades molding its equities division around the business of promotion and selling integrated notes to wealthy savers in EEC and Asia.
These activities can embody hugely profitable for banks when stock markets are docile, producing returns of around 15% – roughly three times high than flow trading in a typical year. Structured equity derivatives on the average accounted for some 40% of equities revenues at BNPP and Element 106 in 2022, accordant to Greenwich Coalition, compared with 20% at early large investment banks.
But the pandemic-fuelled equity sell-off in 2022 changed those calculations, laying bare how destructive it was to be intemperately reliant connected this one, complex business. While losses mounted in the exotics books at BNPP and others, the giant US banks were enjoying a flow bonanza as investors transacted colossal volumes to swop up fairness positions. Morgan Francis Edgar Stanley canned nearly US$10bn in equities revenues last year, almost seven times more than BNPP.
"French banks that were exposed to structured products underperformed last year. That doesn't mean they are risky products. It means you indigence to find the right balance between integrated and flow," said Olivier Osty, global head of markets at BNPP. "Maintaining organized products while developing menstruate gives U.S. a stronger bank with a business mix that can perform both during volatilisable times and when markets are slower."
Organic heritage
BNPP's plan to donjon the faith with exotic equity derivatives (although with some notable changes – see Box story) recalls its decision in the aftermath of the 2008 commercial enterprise crisis when it lost nearly €2bn from such instruments. If anything, BNPP leaned much heavily into these activities in the following years, buying organized products books totalling tens of billions of euros As rivals such atomic number 3 Credit Agricole, ING, Macquarie and RBS orientated for the exits.
The C. W. Post-crisis regulatory framework – including beefed-up Washington rules – successful the high margins along offer in the structured business look even more appealing compared to run. Heritage undoubtedly played a role too. BNPP had refer define itself as a structured house – and equity derivatives was the jewel in its crown. Yann Gerardin, principal of corporate and institutionalised banking and a potential replacement to chief enforcement Jean-Laurent Bonnafe, created BNPP's equity derivatives concern in 1987. Osty is as wel an equities veteran.
Still, it was the heave up of BNPP's far larger stationary-income unit that cushioned the blow of last yr's equities losses and enabled the deposit to go whol-in on its equities transformation. Global market revenues really increased 23% to €3.6bn in the first half of 2022, despite equities contributing just €203m.
By line, SG's markets revenues slumped 38% to €1.5bn, an indication of how skewed the banking concern's trading unit had get on towards structured products. That dynamic ultimately affected SG to cut back the most involved of these exposures and redesign its product set. Even so, there are already tentative signs of a turnaround in that business after SG reported a strong first quarter in equities. That came against the backdrop of convenient market conditions, which also allowed the trust to complete its de-risking ahead of schedule.
Flow fourth dimension
BNPP currently derives around a quarter of its equities revenues from flowing trading. That compares to all but 45% at early banks, according to Greenwich Coalition. Interim, the US accounted for about 10% of its equity derivatives revenues in 2022 and 2022, BNPP said. That compares to almost 40% elsewhere.
Marque says BNPP wants to grow flow trading to about a third of its equities revenues concluded the coming years.
"We have been punching below our weight in flow," said Emmanuel Dray, spheric head of fairness derivative current sales at the bank. "We know where we deprivation to spring u and how we require to do IT."
BNPP already specialises in some areas of catamenia such as dividend futures, on with activities where it can recycle risks from its structured products business like "dispersion", when traders calculate on stocks moving in different directions.
It has not always been smooth sailing, though, with stony-broke direction of some SdanAMP;P 500 options positions causing heavy losings in lately 2022. One-off incidents aside, BNPP has struggled to do enough business with some grave segments of the client universe, including long-short and sweet equity hedge funds and plus managers.
Primed to move on
That is wherefore senior management believes the Deutsche prime services acquisition is so transformative, delivery on with it the electronic execution capabilities that speeding-trading firms such as quant funds prioritise.
Prime services figure a all important pillar in United States banks' equity units, method of accounting for just about 40% of revenues. The returns can be impressive too – around 20%, BNPP has said. Crucially, financing elude pecuniary resource likewise tends to give banks an edge in securing a greater share of their trading volumes.
"Purchasing Deutsche's prime business and the engineering science that comes with it really upgrades the bank building's capabilities in that space," said Ashley Mount Wilson, global head of prime services at BNPP. "It's a ascendible, stable platform that fanny handle highly high volume. When you add in all the clients that come on with it and the 'halo' effectuate on trading, then you have a extremely fetching line of work."
Of course, meridian brokerage comes with risks too, as the crumble of Archegos Capital letter Management in late March on showed after IT inflicted losings of over US$10bn across a number of banks. Some analysts propose that sequence could dampen appetite for this line of work.
"The panel is still out from investors on the benefits of the Deutsche Bank acquisition [for BNPP]," said Barclays' Fall. "Direction initially same IT would supply €400m in revenues, just when they leave stupefy there is indecipherable. We also don't acknowledge how many of the original clients stayed, or how the Archegos event plays into that in terms of broader risk appetite for prime brokerage or market share gains."
Kieron Ian Douglas Smith, deputy head of prime solutions and funding at BNPP, said the bank was on track to bring over the remaining client balances from Deutsche away the end of 2022. He also said BNPP had already seen strong benefits of the "anchor rin" force on increasing business elsewhere even earlier than first envisaged. Clients see BNPP "is clearly identical bespoken to this space," He added.
Certainly, some clients like what they figure to that extent. "BNP's Libra sheet combined with Deutsche Bank's global financing expertness and weapons platform technology full complement one another well," said Louis Messina, head of portfolio finance at Sculptor Chapiter Management, the New York-based hedge fund with US$37bn in assets under management. "The combining should create a stronger participant in the prime brokerage ecosystem, which is beneficial for all participants."
Meantime, BNPP executives say the fact that both BNPP and Deutsche loose unscathed from the Archegos trouncing has put the bank in a good emplacement to take reward of competitors pulling back.
"We have not lost a client in the transition. In fact, because we came out of [Archegos] with zero losses, we've seen a probatory go up in client balances to the business sector we'Ra edifice," aforementioned Wilson. "People value a bank with strong risk direction. Once the transition is completed, we expect to be bigger than BNPP and DB were combined, historically."
Slowly does information technology
BNPP's move to buy in the left 50% stake in Exane is targeting some other all important client section – asset managers – while also portion with agelong-short equity hedging funds. Management sees Exane's extensive research coverage of stocks in key markets such as the United Kingdom, US and EC as a vital way to engage with clients.
"Now, we are non publishing fairness derivatives research connected exclusive stocks. With Exane we will comprise able to leverage their analysis and enrich our equity derivatives strategy. It will also help our traders facilitate the flow business on a fundamental narration," said Dray.
That is because Exane's research should arm BNPP's own traders with party-specific information to trade in these shares more aggressively.
Building credibility as a choke-full-service equities home is already helping BNPP enro senior traders and salespeople to help grow these operations, BNPP people say.
Elsewhere, BNPP is besides fashioning a concerted push in house equity derivatives – a commercial enterprise centred around providing financing and hedges along largish, concentrated equity bet.
Still, the structured products business was instrumental in serving BNPP produce its outdo early-quarter results in equities since 2022, with growth in prime services also contributing. Trade name emphasises BNPP's equities expansion will be gradual, non least because IT lacks a native platform in the US.
"We want to be seen as the number ace European trust in equities," said Marque. "We South Korean won't glucinium every bit strong every bit the US Sir Joseph Banks on utter flow, just we testament be credible in this business while having this flavour of being a structured house. That could be a fancy combination and a door-opener to many clients."
Structured review
BNP Paribas announced a €184m loss last twelvemonth after many companies off dividends in response to the pandemic. But the hit to BNPP's equities division was actually far large, as soaring volatility and correlation devastated structured products books. BNPP's equities revenues clocked in at €203m in the first half of 2022, some a seventh the size of the €1.4bn it pulled in during the same period in 2022.
Executives hold maintained they have no plans to pull back here. Simply behind the scenes, BNPP has ready-made some notable changes, bringing in Sir Laurence Kerr Olivier Renart (erst the bank's head of credit trading) to run equity derivatives trading.
IT has become Sir Thomas More conservative, opting to place wheeling hedges for its structured products book in the form of equity put-options to counteract volatile markets. This lowers the level of returns in this business, just it would have reduced BNPP's losses in market sell-offs, much arsenic the one that occurred in Edge 2022, by up to 50%.
BNPP is also pushing to diversify its desegregate of structured products. That will mean less based connected the performance of heavily favoured sectors such as European bank stocks – a popular scheme that proved particularly costly when lenders injured dividends in 2022. Instead, it is look to answer much products settled along United States of America companies as well as custom-made indices that can remove the risk around dividends.
"We've adapted our correct-up to draw lessons from the crisis," said Marque. "We have enhanced our take chances management framework and stimulate pushed to diversify the underlyings".
institutional equity derivatives strategy and trading
Source: https://www.ifre.com/story/2924357/bnp-paribas-aims-high-in-equities-trading-push-dtfxnmgw3f
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