Barclays Bank and Goldman Sachs have sold a combined $1.04bn with two notes that mirror each other's investment term (one year), payoff profile (capped call/enhanced tracker) and index basket (Eurostoxx 50, FTSE 100 and Topix).
The two leveraged basket-linked notes, which were marketed by JPMorgan and sold $547.5m (Barclays) and $497.5m (Goldman Sachs) respectively, are growth capital-at-risk products paying out 200% participation on the performance of the basket at maturity capped at 121.14%.
These two products have catapulted both banks to the top of the year-to-date issuance and sales rankings in the US market, according to SRP data which also shows an increase in the market’s sales volumes of 12% to $6.5bn, compared with $5.8bn sold during the same period last year.
Goldman Sachs, with 172 products and $1.7bn in sales, took the top spot in the issuance/sales ranking followed by Barclays with 154 products and $1.4bn in sales, swapping places in the ranking of the same period in 2014. JPMorgan comes third following sales of $809m across 114 products.
The record-breaking sales in January were followed by over $3.4bn returning to market in February across 551 products which included Morgan Stanley’s Senior Fixed to Floating Rate Notes, a two-year capital-protected income capped call linked to Libor which sold $250m and Credit Suisse’s Return Notes - Basket, S&P 500, a one-year exotic growth play linked to the upside return of an equally weighted basket (consisting of the Select Sector Financials Index, the Select Sector Industrials Index and the Select Sector Technology Index) and the downside return of the S&P 500.
The top US sellers ranking year to date also includes Morgan Stanley, which sold $582m across 120 products; HSBC with $502m/146 products; UBS with $489m/445 products; Deutsche with $403m/83 products and RBC with $256m/68 products.