The first quarter of 2011 was a virtual no show for Indian investment banks despite the home grown JM completing its transaction with Axis bank worth half a billion in quick time. After a loss making surfeit of Public Sector IPOs last year, the bankers were of course more careful to pick and choose profitable deals and then there were also low quality IPOs as always trailing a good year and destroying any possible pipeline for the IPOs.

With 808 M&A deals, the deal volume is intact but even so there is more value destruction here such as the exit of Hersheys from its Candy JV and upcoming/long standing delisting deals like Merck/ Cadbury. the signs of mega deals in NBFC just like the mega real estate boom last time are sure fire indicators of a red tail about to disappear. With Sanjay Nayar taking a board position for his $100 mln investment in Magma fincorp, that also seems an admission of lack of opportunity by the starved deal bankers. The bonus not being in cash has not helped either but for career seekers like me and dedicated i-bankers with no breadth in banking except that the analyst position offers, career moves are pretty much limited every where , not just i-bankers out of deals or with KPOs

In a separate pad up the private banks continue to score fee based income for their performance in the April - June quarter with HDFC and Axis Bank counting 20% of their income from dfees. While Equity Capital Markets dropped 18% in Q1 and are still down 16% for the six months ended June. Debt markets were down 66% in Q1 and are stil weak though infra bonds are expected to flood the third quarter in  global placements

There were only 61 IPO deals and total deal revenue is a pathetic $300 million for the half year on the Dealbook, with India not getting much from the 22% Deal volume that went to APAC (mint-livemint.com and deals india provided most of the raw data/analysis , validation can be done at financeasia.com) M&A deal volumes are $19 billion till date and account for half the total Fee income from Deals.