Bank of America's M&A bankers and traders did badly, but can be excused
As we mentioned yesterday, it’s Q3 reporting season for America’s big banks. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citi reported yesterday. It’s Bank of America’s turn now, and results weren’t great.
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Both investment banking and sales & trading revenue declined at BofA in Q3, driven by an exceptionally poor Q3 after a strong-ish Q1 and Q2. On six metrics – fixed income, currencies, and commodities (FICC) trading revenue, equities trading revenue, M&A banking revenue, debt capital markets (DCM) revenue, and equity capital markets (ECM) revenue – BofA underperformed all of its peers that have also released results in Q3.
Investment banking was the most egregious example. BofA's IB revenue declined by 16% in Q3 of 2026 compared to 2025, while JPM, Goldman, and Citi posted increases between 9% and 22%. On aggregate for 2026 so far, BofA has posted IB revenue of 15%, well below rivals.
Capital markets, especially DCM, drove the fall. DCM revenue declined by 16% in Q3, and are barely even in 2026 so far compared to the same period in 2025. That is in spite of market intelligence provider Dealogic noting a 10% global increase in DCM deal volume.
The other egregious example is FICC. Revenue declined by 17% in Q3, and is now net down (by 2%) so far in 2026 compared to 2025. Meanwhile, JPM and Citi have posted nine-month FICC results 8% above 2025’s results.
Fingers do not necessarily need to be pointed. Deals are complicated things, and fees are generally booked as revenue when the deal is completed. Busy quarters can be followed by quiet ones. And both the M&A and ECM teams have done averagely enough year to date – really, it’s just the DCM team that should be wondering what’s going wrong.
Sales and trading, however, seems a bit harder to excuse… in America. It was a record third quarter for the markets team, internationally, with the firm crediting client financing in Asia (and the US) for the increase in equities revenue.
Nor are BofA's fixed income traders necessarily to blame for the firm's poor fixed income sales and trading revenues. BofA said its mortgages, municipals, and credit teams did badly, but did not mention the currencies revenue which helped buoy fixed revenues elsewhere. The implication is that the decline may have been partly the result of business mix and not down to unusually poor performance.
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