Time for 'ruthless prioritization' of clients?

The world's largest investment banks should enact changes including “ruthless prioritization” of clients and combining fixed-income and equity trading to avoid a sharp decline in profitability, according to a McKinsey & Co. report released today. The companies should cut the number of products they offer and push many clients to electronic platforms, McKinsey said in an annual review of the investment banking and trading industry. The firms also must understand which clients are most profitable and restrict use of balance sheet to those customers, according to the report. The ideas to help improve profitability accompanied data showing that the return on equity was 8% last year at the 13 largest investment banks and may drop to 4% by 2019 without remedies. Companies have dealt with issues largely as they arise instead of implementing a more comprehensive strategy, the consulting firm said in its report. “The extent of the challenges facing the current business model suggest there is a serious question over its viability,” the consultants wrote. “The mathematics of the old-world view no longer add up.” The 13 largest firms trailed performance of the broader investment-banking industry, which produced a 10 percent return on equity last year, according to the report. The largest firms could see ROEs drop by half amid new leverage restrictions, additional rules on trading and derivatives, and revenue growth that will probably be just 1 percent annually over the next few years, according to the report. ROE is a measure of how well a company uses reinvested earnings to generate additional profit. 'EXECUTION FACTORY McKinsey said the average large investment bank needs to cut costs by an additional 25 percent, and reduce risk-weighted assets by $60 billion while increasing revenue by $1 billion to reach a 12% return on equity. The way banks currently operate, as many as 20% of clients are unprofitable, Kevin Buehler, a director at the consulting firm, said in an interview Tuesday. “Banks can no longer afford to provide all products to all clients in all geographies with a full-service approach,” he said. Investment banks have exposed themselves to inefficiencies and duplication by organizing by asset class, separating traders who buy and sell stocks from those who deal in commodities or currencies, according to the report. Instead, firms should organize into an “execution factory” that handles most flow trading of standardized products, largely through electronic platforms, according to the report. That includes interest-rate swaps, which will more closely resemble equities as they are traded on swap-execution facilities, Mr. Buehler said. REDUCE HEAD COUNT “The asset-class-by-asset-class mindset is quite deeply embedded in most organizations,” he said. “You still need sales professionals who understand what their clients' needs are in that asset class, but the bundling across asset classes may be quite different.” Banks also should have a separate division that designs and structures unique hedges and other products for clients, and another group that allocates all funding and customer financing, McKinsey said. Firms must also continue to reduce head count and try to determine the true profit a trader generates beyond an average employee in his or her spot in order to distribute compensation most efficiently, according to the report. “Most banks are doing a much better job than in the past in aligning compensation with absolute performance levels,” according to the report. “The next stage is to better identify value created by incremental profits generated, rather than the 'value of the seat' of the underlying franchise, with payout ratios recalibrated accordingly.” (Bloomberg News)