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“When I think about those quarters, it’s really a strong Q1, which is business as usual, and then the impact of the crisis, the stability, and then we had opportunity (in the fourth quarter). That really drove behaviour last year… We were pushed to truly extraordinary activity levels because of that,” said the banking veteran, who has seen his share of volatility in his 27 years on Bay Street.
BMO rode the roller coaster of volatile capital markets, emerging as the top ownership equity dealer and IPO dealer last year, according to Financial Post Data.
In equity, BMO led the league table with 53 bookrunner mandates receiving $3.87 billion in league table credit, or slightly more than 10 per cent of all equity financings.
BMO was also a bookrunner on waste management firm GFL Environmental Inc.’s two offerings that collectively raised $2.92 billion, telecom giant Telus Corp’s $1.5 billion and payment firm Nuvei Corp.’s $1.06 billion. The bank also helped Vancouver-based AbCellera Biologics Inc., which is working on a promising COVID-19 antibody, debut on the public markets for $707.3 million in December.
With rock-bottom lending rates on offer, government and corporate debt made up the bulk of the $528 billion in financings in 2020, according to FP Data, but companies shied away from mergers and acquisitions as asset prices looked uncertain.
“My bellwether is M&A activity, which went way down, while financings went way up,” Barclay said. “That’s how I think about M&A activities, the need to take risks, (with companies) wanting to put risk on. And that process went down obviously with the economic uncertainty due to the pandemic and otherwise.”
