Instead of doing business with companies in big metropolitan cities like London, New York, Hong Kong and San Francisco Wall Street’s dealmakers are now migrating to cities closer to home.
CitiGroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan have now hired dealmakers to acquire new business with middle-market companies in cities like Atlanta, Denver and Seattle. And not without good reason because according to a presentation of Bank of America Merrill Lynch these middle-market companies paid over $8.2 billion in deal fees in 2015 which was more than the total fees from regions like Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe all together.
“This is a key focus for us as we have developed the other areas of our investment bank. Relatively speaking, this represents a greater opportunity than some traditional avenues of growth,” said Christian Meissner, the head of global corporate and investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in an interview with Business Insider.
In the past these banks where more focused on business opportunities in other (larger) cities but the plan to migrate to regional cities has always been an option for them. The switch in interest is mainly because of the growth of bigger clients in larger cities is slowing significantly. That’s why any place that shows growth is now a sought-after place to do business.
“It is happening right now, People are waking up to it. We’ve been doing it for a while, so it is nice to be ahead of the curve,” said James Roddy, the supervisor of regional investment banking and M&A business at JPMorgan
