Barclays' youthful head of EMEA M&A will have an interesting year

Stephen Pick, the EMEA head of M&A at Barclays, has got his work cut out. 

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Pick, who was appointed head of M&A for EMEA at Barclays in August 2024, and who previously spent seven and a half years at Credit Suisse, has - so far at least - not presided over a very appreciable increase in Barclays' market share in European M&A.

Instead, data from Dealogic indicates that Barclays fell from 9th place to 11th place in the EMEA M&A rankings last year, and that it went from fifth to 7th in the same rankings for the UK alone. For Dealogic, the only point of redemption was Barclays' EMEA M&A market share, which Dealogic says rose to 2.5% last year, from 2.4% in 2023. Even so, Barclays' EMEA market share was 2.7% in 2022, so it's hard to claim a comprehensive victory.

It's early days, but Barclays has some bullish aspirations. In a presentation last October, Cathal Deasy and Taylor Wright, Barclays' co-heads of investment banking, outlined their intention of driving up Barclays' market share in M&A and equity capital markets and of reducing its reliance on debt capital markets. Europe, and the UK in particular, are the key battlegrounds. 

Pick is Deasy's man. The two worked together at Credit Suisse, where Deasy was head of M&A for EMEA between 2016 and 2021, before becoming Credit Suisse's global head of M&A and then joining Barclays in March 2023 just before Credit Suisse collapsed. Pick spent seven years at Credit Suisse after joining from Deutsche Bank in 2017. Deasy made him MD at the bank in 2020. Now? Now he's running Barclays whole EMEA business. 

We understand that Pick was a rising star at Credit Suisse. However, he's also described by some as "Deasy's boy." By our reckoning, he's in his late 30s. Pick doesn't report to Deasy directly at Barclays, but to Tim Maine, who runs the investment bank in EMEA. As Pick attempts to fulfil Deasy's big aspirations in Europe, this might be a godsend - or not.  

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