Are Barclays' investment bankers about to report a horrible quarter?

What's been happening at Barclays' investment bank? We're asking because the bank has just replaced its EMEA head of M&A and Chirantan Barua, senior analyst at Bernstein Research, has put about a nasty chart suggesting some of Barclays' preferred business areas didn't do too well in the most recent reporting period.

Chirantan's chart looks like this.

Source: Bernstein Research 

Fundamentally, he thinks that with the exception of 'lending' every area of Barclays investment bank had a bad second quarter compared to the second quarter of 2014. This includes equities and investment banking (advisory), the US-based units which are supposed to be leading the unit into the future.

If Chirantan's right, it won't be the first time Barclays' advisory and equities businesses have had a poor quarter - they didn't do too well in the first three months of the year either. As a reminder, Morgan Stanley's equities business achieved a 27% year-on-year revenue increase in Q2, while Goldman Sachs M&A revenues were up 62% in the same period. 

So, what's up with Barclays? Barua attributes his poor prognostication to comparables. Barclays' equities and M&A businesses did well in the second quarter of 2014 and the bank will struggle to match that.  Either way, it doesn't look good in a business that's fighting to justify its existence.

(Photo credit: Roger)