The DCM bankers who feel downtrodden: “We need blood on the carpet. They think it’s shooting fish in a barrel”

If you work in debt capital markets (DCM) in 2025, you might expect to feel serene. It's not a great year - fee-based DCM revenues are down 1% globally according to Dealogic - but it's not a bad one either. And yet, DCM bankers at some big banks are down in the dumps.

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At issue is the value banks' assign to their oeuvre. As banks cut costs, DCM bankers are complaining of being squeezed by senior executives who don't understand their roles properly. 

"There is always a battle internally," says one DCM managing director (MD). "At banks with a big DCM business, the feeling is that it's a cash cow and that vanilla investment grade DCM can be managed by any automation machine that can simply pump out volumes and manage mandates."

Debt capital markets bankers help clients issue debt in the form of bonds. Investment grade debt refers to debt that's rated as BBB or higher by rating agencies and deemed unlikely to default. DCM is big business: Dealogic says banks have earned $6.6bn in fees from issuing debt so far this year, compared to $500bn from equity capital markets and $2.9bn from M&A. But while ECM and M&A are seen as skilled professions requiring close client knowledge, DCM bankers say they're being taken for granted.

"Quantitative easing made issuing bonds a bit like shooting fish in a barrel," says the managing director. "Failed have bond issues have become the exception and although there was a bit of volatility around Trump's tariffs, it's been easy for a while. A lot of debt issuers haven't seen failure. We need blood on the carpet for the respect to return."

Anecdotally, some of the unhappiest DCM bankers are at Citi, which has experienced a cascade of exits from its London DCM team, both intended and not. Last month, Citi fired some of its most senior DCM bankers in London, including Jake Atcheson, one of the UK's top insurance-focused bankers. 

Insiders say Atecheson's departure is a reflection of the mistaken belief that DCM is easy and that more junior staff can do the job. "The emphasis is all on M&A and ECM. There's a pecking order and debt financing is at the bottom," says one. "But what isn't understood is that a successful bond issue requires a lot of careful positioning with investors and syndicate to get the bond away." 

The private credit push has further undermined DCM bankers, who deal with public markets. At Citi, Achintya Mangla, a former JPMorgan ECM banker works across ECM, DCM and private capital markets.  Private capital markets are the most alluring of the three. 

It's not just senior Citi DCM bankers who are grumbling. At HSBC, where debt capital markets bankers should surely be happy to survive as the bank ditches M&A and ECM bankers outside the Middle East and Asia, there are complaints too. 

HSBC's DCM bankers have been leaving. Insiders at the bank say it's partly because the function is undervalued: there's a belief that relationships sit with coverage bankers and that DCM is simply an execution function. They say this isn't the case: DCM is more complicated than it seems; senior DCM bankers own their relationships. Internal politicking by "insecure" coverage bankers fighting to keep their jobs is obscuring this fact. 

Ultimately, banks may discover senior DCM bankers' value only when it's too late. "Clients will go to banks with experienced people," predicts one DCM MD. "All it takes is for a few bond issues to fail and the market will change."

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