Credit Suisse had become a big player in Australia’s cash equities market, running the second-biggest business by market share in 2020, 2021 and 2022 and handling about one-tenth of all trades involving an ASX-listed company.
The broker picked up some of the market share left by former No.2 Deutsche Bank when it retreated from institutional equities in 2019 - adding the liquidity piece that was missing from its “content and liquidity” strategy. [The content piece came via its analysts, including a handful of Peter Lee award winners, and traders, who would lob ideas to fund managers each morning.]
The fall reflects its narrower service offering. And once you start losing share, it’s hard to stop the outflows. It snowballs. And equities is a scale game.whose exit from equities was announced in a shock overnight decisionCredit Suisse’s decline is likely to take a different route. There’s no off switch, or finishing date. How exactly the unwind, or merger with UBS, takes place remains to be seen.
Rival equities team heads will hope Credit Suisse’s share is split among Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Macquarie and BoA, the other big incumbents. Barrenjoey’s also getting its prime broking business going.