Keefe, Bruyette & Woods made a highly significant strategic move when it committed to establishing a full-service investment bank in Europe, largely mirroring its successful U.S. platform.

KBW’s European practice is now fully established across research, sales and trading and investment banking advisory services, with a London-based staff of over 70 professionals. Our European reach extends to the EU member states, Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. Access to our market-leading U.S. platform provides a network of industry specialists, enabling global reach and expertise.

Please click here to view all of the selected KBW European transactions.

On a global scale, KBW’s resources are larger than any other specialist firm, with almost 450 employees focused exclusively on the financial services sector. This in-depth industry knowledge enables us to be experts in our field. As such, we are able to provide high quality, original and objective advice, in addition to creating innovative solutions for our clients’ business strategies.

Our core services include:

• M&A Advisory
• Equity Capital Markets
  
  • Equity Capital Raising
    
  • IPOs
    
  • Corporate Broking
    
• Private Equity Advisory

We also have access to various debt capital markets products and services through our New York office.

M&A Advisory

KBW’s European investment banking team has extensive experience in providing M&A advisory services to financial institutions and a deep understanding of the factors affecting such transactions. Our 15 advisory professionals, including local advisers in the Benelux region, France and Germany, focus heavily on maintaining strong client relationships to gain a thorough understanding of our clients’ business and strategy so that we are able to tailor advice accordingly and offer the highest level of customer service. This relationship-based approach complements our significant staff ownership culture, and, coupled with our commitment to the long term, distinguishes us from our competitors.

Leveraging our independence and lack of conflicts, our professionals have a strong track record in both sell-side and buy-side advisory roles. As an independent firm, we can act for acquirers, target companies, special board committees or selling shareholders, operating at the heart of any process, assisting in negotiations, and giving impartial and objective advice on securing the target asset or company and the value of any offers being considered.

Equity Capital Markets

Our in-depth industry knowledge gives us insight into how financial institutions are perceived by institutional investors, enabling us to offer important advice on the appropriate structure and timing of equity offerings.  Our investment banking personnel have extensive experience in all forms of equity capital raisings from IPOs through secondary share sales.

In London, we have 22 research analysts currently covering over 140 pan-European financial stocks.  As a specialist, KBW’s research is predicated on being differentiated and high quality – the coverage universe extends across both geographies and the market capitalisation spectrum, providing unmatched depth of knowledge in the financials’ verticals.  This experience is recognized by the investment community in top rankings in independent surveys. 

On the distribution side, our specialist sales team is second to none, with the largest sales force in London focused exclusively on one sector, providing influential and targeted daily access to the financial specialists within the investing institutions.  Our 18 sales staff for European equities include 6 based in New York, giving KBW unparalleled access to U.S. investors who are relevant to European corporates.  We currently service over 300 institutional investors in European financials across the globe and are extremely active in setting up investor roadshows for corporates in all major locations.

Our research and sales capabilities enable KBW to offer a powerful distribution function for European financial sector equities, and our Equity Capital Markets business has proven itself as a core competency where we can add value to issuers.  Over the last two years KBW has acted in high profile ECM deals raising over €20bn.  This has rapidly established us as a market leader and no.1 co-manager for financials equity offerings in Europe.

This European equity distribution platform sits alongside extensive research, sales and trading of U.S. financial stocks in New York, giving KBW a unique insight into global investor trends and opinions, enabling us to provide global perspectives, where necessary.

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