Look at it from outside the UK, and corporate broking must seem fairly dull. Unlike global investment banking, where rivals jockey for position in ever-changing league tables, the peculiarly British business of providing free long-term advice to companies changes at a glacial pace. It has taken 10 years for J P Morgan Cazenove to lose its position as top broker to the FTSE 100, according to financial publisher Adviser Rankings. And J P Morgan is still only two mandates away from regaining its crown.
Observers of the broking business - where companies typically take on two investment banks to counsel them on the state of markets and investors - will have noticed recent upheaval. Barclays' ascent is the most notable. The UK bank has risen from an also-ran in 2010 to fifth in the most recent league table for blue-chip clients, with 20 mandates. UBS has lost sway, meanwhile. Comfortably ahead of those two banks and Morgan Stanley sits J P Morgan Caz, now narrowly behind new top dog Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
This jostling aside, little has changed. J P Morgan still has by far the largest number of FTSE 250 clients, whose combined market cap is still more than double that of Bank of America's - the same gap as in 2011. In the last six months, J P Morgan's blue-chip ranking was hurt by the changing corporate landscape. It lost one FTSE 100 mandate as BG was acquired by Shell, and two more as Aberdeen Asset Management and Smiths Group's dwindling market caps saw them dumped out of the index.
J P Morgan Caz thus remains the iceberg of UK corporate broking, even if it is melting a little around the edges. The financial crisis may have prompted some soul-searching in blue-chip boardrooms that allowed Barclays to make inroads. But the little-changing nature of broking remains as resolutely British as awful summer weather.
Observers of the broking business - where companies typically take on two investment banks to counsel them on the state of markets and investors - will have noticed recent upheaval. Barclays' ascent is the most notable. The UK bank has risen from an also-ran in 2010 to fifth in the most recent league table for blue-chip clients, with 20 mandates. UBS has lost sway, meanwhile. Comfortably ahead of those two banks and Morgan Stanley sits J P Morgan Caz, now narrowly behind new top dog Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
This jostling aside, little has changed. J P Morgan still has by far the largest number of FTSE 250 clients, whose combined market cap is still more than double that of Bank of America's - the same gap as in 2011. In the last six months, J P Morgan's blue-chip ranking was hurt by the changing corporate landscape. It lost one FTSE 100 mandate as BG was acquired by Shell, and two more as Aberdeen Asset Management and Smiths Group's dwindling market caps saw them dumped out of the index.
J P Morgan Caz thus remains the iceberg of UK corporate broking, even if it is melting a little around the edges. The financial crisis may have prompted some soul-searching in blue-chip boardrooms that allowed Barclays to make inroads. But the little-changing nature of broking remains as resolutely British as awful summer weather.