The News: RBC Is Hiring U.S. Bankers In Push For Top-10 League Ranking

Pursuing an ambitious goal to break into U.S. investment banking's top 10, Royal Bank of Canada is adding to the 24 senior bankers it hired away from Wall Street firms this past year.

RBC's hiring spree "has slowed down a bit, but you'll still see us making significant additions over the next quarter," Blair Fleming, appointed U.S. investment-banking chief at RBC Capital Markets in January, told Bloomberg News. "What we're looking to do is continue to broaden the bankers and clients that we have."

Specifically, Toronto-based RBC aims to broaden from its traditional mid-market client base (companies valued at up to $2 billion) to the "mid-cap" market, serving clients with a market value up to $10 billion.

To raise market share in M&A advisory (where it ranked 21st in the U.S. last year with $11.9 billion in transactions) and underwriting equity deals (where it ranked 14th with $1.27 billion), RBC has been hiring senior bankers with established relationsips in industries such as transportation, restructuring, and aerospace. One recent example: eight months after hiring aerospace and defense banker James Caldwell from Banc of America Securities, RBC was sole advisor for Triumph Group in a $984 million purchase of Vought Aircraft Industries announced last week.

RBC also is hiring in leveraged finance and high-yield debt, Bloomberg says. The company currently employs 254 U.S.-based investment bankers.

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