Britain's Barclays, which snapped up Lehman Brothers' U.S. business a year ago, aims to be a consistent top 5 player in U.S. equities and says it is not done with expanding there.
Barclays Capital's president, Jerry del Missier, said late on Tuesday the bank was expanding in Asia and Europe but also expects to capitalise on growth sectors in the United States, including prime services and U.S. local government bonds.
"We don't think we are done in the U.S.. We think this still represents a tremendous strategic opportunity — the businesses we have acquired, combined with the businesses we have built put us in a terrific position," he told Reuters in an interview.
He said Barclays is taking advantage of a retreat by rivals in prime services — brokerage services typically aimed at hedge funds — and saw significant growth in local government bond issuance.
"Governments right now need a lot of money and they are going to be tapping the market. Again we are very well placed to be a significant player in public finance market."
Barclays has not yet propelled itself to the top of global league tables, despite the Lehman deal, but del Missier said European and Asian growth would help change that.
BarCap currently ranks 11th in global M&A, after advising on 49 deals worth $124 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data.
"We are still not up and running in Europe and Asia, and especially in Europe, that will have an impact on global league tables. I am confident you will start to see the results come through pretty quickly," he told Reuters.
"Here in the US it took us a little while to get restarted, but if you look at the run rate, particularly in equities, we are back in the thick of things. I am very confident we will be a consistent top 5 player in U.S. equities."
Lehman Brothers' Asian business was largely bought up by rival Nomura but Barclays said it would continue to grow in the region, expecting to reap the benefits of its bet on the Japanese economy in 2010.
Asked whether the bank would use acquisitions to grow in Asia, del Missier said: "We never say never but … organic growth is something we know very well ..That will be our focus."
Del Missier had said in May that he aimed to hire more than 750 staff as part of BarCap's plan to win leading positions in equities and M&A advisory.
He said on Tuesday the bank had hired 700 staff to date, though recruitment had slowed as the market environment improved.
"We are back to a more normal (recruiting) environment, but we will certainly continue to focus on attracting the best talent. We have done a significant portion of the building of European and Japanese equities business, and a fair bit of hiring around M&A," he said.
Barclays Capital announced earlier this week it had hired veteran Rothschild banker Stefano Marsaglia to chair its financial institutions group.
