It’s results time all over again, with some of the major US banks announcing their latest results, and an autocall tracking the performance of major ‘stay at home’ stocks.

US bank Citigroup doubled its structured product sales of US$2.3 billion in Q4 20 from its Q4 19 figure of US$1.1 billion. It currently ranks as the second most prolific issuer group in the fourth quarter US league tables in terms of sales while its product issuance stands at 661, compared with 401 during the same period of 2019, according to SRP data.

Citi reported a net income of US$4.6 billion for the fourth quarter 2020, on revenues of US$16.5 billion. This can be compared with a net income of US$5.0 billion (a seven percent drop), or on revenues of US$18.4 billion for the fourth quarter 2019.

We are seeing growing customer interest in equity-linked structured notes with underlying stocks in the information technology sector - Jacquelyn Tan

Heading up the top issuer groups in terms of sales during Q4 20 is Morgan Stanley with US$2.6 billion (640 products). The bank led by James P. Gorman has posted both record net revenues of US$48 billion - an increase of 16% year-over-year, and a net income of US$11 billion, up 22%. Equity sales and trading net revenues increased by 32% from a year ago, driven by a strong performance across products and geographies and increased client activity, with particular strength in derivatives.

Also in the top five was Goldman Sachs, which reported net revenues of US$44.6 billion and net earnings of US$9.5 billion for the year ended 31 December 2020 with the former being the firm’s highest net revenues in the past 11 years. It attributes its record-breaking figures to its client service and execution of its strategic priorities, despite difficult macroeconomic factors caused by Covid-19.

Staying in the realm of numbers and figures, the balance of structured deposits for Chinese small-medium banks at the end of December 2020 fell by 37.8% to CNY3.9 trillion (US$594.3 billion) compared to the end of December 2019. As a whole, the group of banks has met the requirement to decrease the issuance of structured deposits by the end of 2020 to two-thirds of the level recorded at the end of 2019, according to the latest data released by the People’s Bank of China. The figure is a continued drop by 28.7% quarter-on-quarter when the Chinese banks were required to reduce their structured deposit issuance to the same level seen at the end of 2019.

In people moves this week, it was announced that Harsh Shah, former global head of financial institutions origination and solutions at NatWest Markets in London, has joined Morgan Stanley as head of fixed income division solution sales for Emea. He joins the US bank after four years at the Royal Bank of Scotland subsidiary Natwest Markets as head of financial institutions origination & solutions, where he reported to Scott Satriano, head of financing & risk solutions at RBS Corporate & Institutional Banking division.

Euronext has appointed Delphine d’Amarzit has been appointed as CEO of Euronext Paris and member of the managing board of Euronext. D’Amarzit joins from Orange Bank where she was deputy CEO, with responsibility for the oversight of the operations, credit, finance, risk and compliance functions.

Looking at note issuances specifically, two new announcements have stood out this past week.

Elite Alfred Berg (EAB) has launched Teknologiayhtiöt Kuponki in Finland. The six-year autocall is issued on the paper of BNP Paribas Issuance BV and linked to the performance of the Solactive Home Staying Technologies 2020 AR 5% Index. The index is used for the first time on the SRP Finland database and tracks 10 US-listed companies, including big tech names like Alphabet, Amazon and associated hardware producers such as Nvidia.

United Overseas Bank (UOB) has distributed close to 300 ESG-linked flow structured notes as of the end of 2020, with a notional value of approximately S$250m. The Singaporean bank began to consider ESG as part of its full investment solutions catalogue from late 2019.  

“We are seeing growing customer interest in equity-linked structured notes with underlying stocks in the information technology sector,” Jacquelyn Tan, head of group personal financial services at UOB, told SRP. “In terms of payoffs, stepdown auto-callable notes and glider notes, which offer customers early redemption ahead of maturity, are popular options,” she said, adding that Credit Suisse and Société Générale are among the top issuers for the bank’s ESG-linked structured notes.

Image credit: Wikimedia.