Wall Street Takes Back Equity Underwriting Top Spots

America is No. 1 again on Wall Street. Woot. 

After Chinese financial institutions claimed the top spots in ​​global equity underwriting league tables in 2022, good ol’ American firms like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan clawed their way back to the top of the rankings, according to a Bloomberg analysis published Thursday.

IPWoe’s

To be perfectly clear: the winnings were slim in 2023. Overall, just over $24 billion was raised in US IPOs this year, up a smidge from last year but still down more than 90% from the IPO fever of 2021. Globally, about $516 billion was raised across IPOs, secondaries, and the convertible bond market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, leaving US firms with big international operations plenty of room to play.

But for Chinese firms, which clutched last year’s top spot amid the US IPO draught, 2023 was a nosedive:

• While Chinese companies raised $55 billion en route to IPOs this year, that still marked a 33% decrease from the year before, due to regulatory clampdowns in the country starting late last year that slowed the pace of IPOs.
•  Citic Securities, which owned the top spot in last year’s league tables, fell all the way to No. 6 this year, while last year’s fifth-ranked China International Capital Corp. fell all the way to eighth.

“China could see its IPO pipeline squeezed further amid regulatory caution on vetting new listings in order to bolster secondary-market activity,” wrote Sharnie Wong, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst based in Hong Kong.

Road Paved With Gold: The vacuum allowed Goldman Sachs to sweep into the top spot, underwriting $41 billion in offerings globally, good for a roughly 8% market share. That narrowly beats BofA’s $39 billion and JPMorgan’s third-place $36 billion, with Morgan Stanley and Citi rounding out the top five.