A good time to be in transaction banking?

With the major blue-chip US banks all lined up for earnings announcement over the next week or so, there’s been a lot of doom and gloom predicted. JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America and others are apparently facing further asset write downs, losses in consumer credit and mortgages, and shrinking income from investment banking, both fee-based – M&A advisory and underwriting – and from fixed income market activities.

Conspicuous in absence from these tales of woe are the banks’ corporate serving businesses, the transaction banking divisions. This got me thinking about something that Werner Steinmüller, head of global transaction banking at Deutsche Bank, said at the EBAday event in Helsinki a few weeks ago.

He claimed it was an excellent time to be in transaction banking – payments and cash management, trade services etc. As the rest of business lines in diversified global financial groups suffer, the transaction banking groups continue to be a strong income generator and provider of liquidity. Suddenly, boards and CEOs have become a lot more interested in transaction banking, and as a result Steinmüller said it has been a lot easier to get new projects for business improvement signed off. He’s even had colleagues from the investment banking side contacting him and asking about employment opportunities.

I suspect Deutsche Bank isn’t alone in this trend.