---
title: "Bank Markets Divisions"
book: "The Industry: Firms, Roles and Careers"
subject: quant
language: en
chapter: 7
exercises: 8
source: https://one-course.com/books/quant/17/en/chapter/7-bank-markets-divisions
---

# Chapter 7 — Bank Markets Divisions

Every large bank reports its markets revenue in two lines: fixed income, currencies and commodities, and equities. The split differs across banks by more than their size does. In 2025 one US bank earned 64% of its markets revenue in equities and another 26%; a French bank earned 61% in equities while describing its wholesale business as having “distinctive global leadership in equity derivatives”; a German bank earned none at all, having announced in July 2019 that it would exit equities sales and trading. The mix is the bank’s product strength, and it decides which quant jobs the bank has: a bank strong in equity derivatives employs pricing quants for structured products and volatility, one strong in rates employs curve and XVA quants. This chapter reads banks’ markets divisions as employers through what they publish.

## 7.1 What banks publish about their markets businesses

Banks are the most transparent employers in this book. Listed banks file annual reports with segment results (Book 16, chapter 5), and inside the investment-banking segment most report markets revenue by product line, quarter by quarter. What they publish, and what they do not, shapes what a candidate can learn.

**Definition 7.1 (FICC).**

*FICC* (fixed income, currencies and commodities) is the markets business of a bank that deals in government and corporate bonds, interest-rate and credit derivatives, foreign exchange, commodities and their financing; its counterpart line is equities: cash shares, equity derivatives and prime services.

Each bank draws the line its own way. One reports “fixed income markets” and “equity markets”; another “[FICC](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-ficc)” and “equities” inside a segment that also contains advisory; a third reports “fixed income” and “equity” inside its institutional securities segment; a European bank reports “Equity & Prime Services”; another includes financing activities in fixed income. Comparisons are therefore of shares within each bank, not of amounts across banks, and each bank’s own line names are kept beside its numbers.

![The two markets lines banks report and the desks within them, with the quantitative jobs each desk tends to employ (chapter 18 describes the bank-quant roles). Banks draw the lines differently; this is the common shape.](https://one-course.com/images/onecourse/chapters/quant-17/in-bank-markets-divisions/fig-e64e24cbf7fd.svg)

***Figure 7.1.** The two markets lines banks report and the desks within them, with the quantitative jobs each desk tends to employ (chapter 18 describes the bank-quant roles). Banks draw the lines differently; this is the common shape.*

## 7.2 American banks

The five largest US banks report their markets lines in their annual reports on Form 10-K, three years at a time. In 2025 their equities shares ranged from 26% to 64% ([Figure 7.2](#fig-in-bank-markets-divisions-mix)), and the share rose at each of the four that report 2023 figures, by 4.5 to 7.7 percentage points, as equities revenue grew faster than fixed income. The two banks whose businesses are investment banking and markets rather than consumer banking earn more than half of their markets revenue in equities; the largest consumer-and-corporate bank earns about three dollars in eight.

**As of December 2025 — Nine banks’ markets revenue by product line.**

| bank | lines as reported | currency | [FICC](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-ficc) | equities | equities share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Morgan Stanley | Fixed Income; Equity | $m | 8 716 | 15 631 | 64.2% |
| Societe Generale | Fixed Income and Currencies; Equities | € m | 2 346 | 3 634 | 60.8% |
| Goldman Sachs | [FICC](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-ficc); Equities | $m | 14 522 | 16 535 | 53.2% |
| BNP Paribas | [FICC](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-ficc); Equity & Prime Services | € m | 5 522 | 4 046 | 42.3% |
| Bank of America | [FICC](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-ficc); Equities (sales and trading) | $m | 12 267 | 8 604 | 41.2% |
| Barclays | [FICC](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-ficc); Equities | £m | 5 429 | 3 225 | 37.3% |
| JPMorgan Chase | Fixed Income Markets; Equity Markets | $m | 22 532 | 13 250 | 37.0% |
| Citigroup | Fixed Income Markets; Equity Markets | $m | 16 226 | 5 744 | 26.1% |
| Deutsche Bank | Fixed Income & Currencies (incl. financing) | € m | 9 600 | – | 0% |

Full-year 2025 figures from the banks’ Forms 10-K and results releases, ordered by equities share. The US banks report 2023 figures too: equities shares were 31.4% (JPMorgan Chase), 48.7% (Goldman Sachs), 56.5% (Morgan Stanley) and 21.6% (Citigroup).

## 7.3 The French banks and equity derivatives

Two French banks sit on either side of the middle: one earns 61% of its markets revenue in equities, the other 42%. The first describes its wholesale bank as offering “distinctive global leadership in equity derivatives, structured finance and ESG”. Equity derivatives in this sense are largely structured products (Book 5, chapter 19): notes whose payoff depends on share indices and single shares, sold through networks to savers and institutions, and hedged by the bank’s trading desks (Book 9, chapter 28). A business of this kind employs many quants per dollar of revenue: structurers design the products, library quants build the pricers, desk strategists hedge the exotic books, validators check the models (chapter 18).

**Remark 7.2 (Why specialisation persists).**

A bank’s product strength is sticky. Pricing libraries, trained staff, distribution relationships and the risk of the existing book take years to build and cannot be moved quickly; a bank strong in one product tends to stay so, and one that exits a product rarely returns. The published numbers show the mix, not its causes; the causes the banks give are in their own descriptions, which are statements of strategy, not evidence.

## 7.4 Other European banks

A British bank earns 37% of its markets revenue in equities, and a German bank none: having announced in July 2019 that it would “exit its Equities Sales & Trading business, while retaining a focused equity capital markets operation”, it reported fixed income and currencies revenue of € 9.6 billion in 2025, including financing activities. An exit of that kind closes a line of quant jobs at one employer at once, and the people move to the banks and firms that stay. Converted at the European Central Bank’s average rates for 2025, the nine banks’ markets revenue totalled $173.9 billion, of which $72.7 billion was equities; the three most equity-heavy banks earned 49.9% of that equities revenue.

![Nine banks’ 2025 markets revenue, equities and fixed income, converted to US dollars at the ECB’s annual average rates, ordered by equities share (not by size). Each bank’s lines are its own and are not strictly comparable in amount. Data: Forms 10-K and results releases for 2025, through in_banks.usd.](https://one-course.com/images/onecourse/chapters/quant-17/in-bank-markets-divisions/fig-f033487c5d29.svg)

***Figure 7.2.** Nine banks’ 2025 markets revenue, equities and fixed income, converted to US dollars at the ECB’s annual average rates, ordered by equities share (not by size). Each bank’s lines are its own and are not strictly comparable in amount. Data: Forms 10-K and results releases for 2025, through `in_banks.usd`.*

## 7.5 League tables: who compiles them and what they measure

**Definition 7.3 (Revenue pool, league table).**

A *revenue pool* is the total revenue that all dealers together earn from a product or a group of clients over a period, as estimated by an analyst. A *league table* ranks dealers by their share of a revenue pool, of volumes or of clients’ business, as estimated and published by an analytics firm, an industry publication or a data vendor, for a stated period.

Banks quote [league tables](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-league) in their presentations, and candidates read them as a ranking of employers. They are neither filings nor audited: they are estimates built by analytics firms from the banks’ own submissions and from client surveys. One such firm describes its service as helping banks “measure revenue growth, wallet share, and retention across sales, product and service”, with “leading global and regional corporate investment banks and dealers” as its clients. A [league table](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-league)’s rank depends on its definitions — which products, which regions, which period — and on who submits data. This book cites no ranking. Where a table is useful, it states its publisher, its date and what it measures, and a candidate should do the same.

## 7.6 Quant headcounts: what is and is not public

No bank in this chapter reports how many quants it employs. Annual reports give total headcount (chapter 1: 318 512 at one bank, a headcount of 47 400 at another) and sometimes the number in the corporate and investment bank, but not the number in pricing, risk or validation. The public evidence is indirect: the labour-condition filings of chapter 14 show the bank-quant titles and their pay ranges by employer, and the remuneration disclosures of chapter 14 count the material risk takers by business area. A candidate who wants to know the size of a team asks the team.

## 7.7 Tutorial: where the equity derivatives are

**Goal.** Tabulate nine banks’ markets revenue by product line from their filings, convert it to one currency and order the banks by mix. **End state:** the dated box and [Figure 7.2](#fig-in-bank-markets-divisions-mix).

1. **The rows.** `data/industry/bank_markets_revenue.csv` holds one row per bank and year: the two lines as the bank reports them, the currency, the ledger row that quotes the filing, and the bank’s own line names.
2. **The rates.** `data/industry/ecb_fx_annual.csv` holds the ECB’s annual average reference rates; `firm.bankmix.load_fx` turns them into US dollars per euro and per pound.
3. **The mix.** `firm.bankmix.mix_table(rows, 2025)` orders the banks by equities share ([Listing 7.1](#lst-in-bank-markets-divisions-mix)); `in_banks.changes()` gives each bank’s change in share between its first and last reported years. `def equities_share (row): tot = row.ficc + row.equities return row.equities / tot if tot else float (" nan " ) def mix_table (rows, year): return sorted (((r.bank, equities_share(r)) for r in rows if r.year == year), key=lambda x: -x[1 ]) def mix_change (rows, bank, y0, y1): s = {r.year: equities_share(r) for r in rows if r.bank == bank} return 100 * (s[y1] - s[y0]) def top_k_equities_share (rows, fx, year, k): ry = [r for r in rows if r.year == year] eq = {r.bank: to_usd(r, fx)[1 ] for r in ry} top = [b for b, _ in mix_table(ry, year)[:k]] return sum (eq[b] for b in top) / sum (eq.values())` **Listing 7.1.** The equities share, the ordering by mix, and the share of equities revenue earned by the most equity-heavy banks. code/firm/bankmix/firm_bankmix.py
4. **Concentration.** `in_banks.top3()` converts equities revenue to dollars and computes the share of the three most equity-heavy banks.

**What to change next.** Add a bank from its own results release, with its own line names (exercise 7); recompute the dollar totals at 2024 rates to see how much of a year’s change is currency.

## 7.8 Build: the markets mix

**Purpose.** Put banks’ markets revenue in two standard lines and one currency, so that chapters 12 and 18 can read a bank’s product strength beside its pay data and roles.

**Interface.** `firm.bankmix`: `Row(bank, year, ficc, equities, currency, ledger, lines)`; `load(path)`; `load_fx(path)`; `to_usd(row, fx)`; `equities_share(row)`; `mix_table(rows, year)`; `mix_change(rows, bank, y0, y1)`; `top_k_equities_share(rows, fx, year, k)`.

**Rules.** Every row keeps the bank’s own line names and its source; amounts are converted at the year’s average rate, never at a spot rate; banks are ordered by mix, never by size alone or by any ranking.

**Acceptance tests.** `code/firm/bankmix/tests/`: shares and order on constructed rows; the change in share in percentage points; conversion through the euro cross rate; the top-$k$ share; a CSV round trip.

**Stretch.** Quarterly rows and the seasonality of the mix; a regression of each bank’s equities share on the VIX index’s yearly mean (Book 16’s table).

Sources and further reading

- Forms 10-K for 2025 of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America.
- Results releases for 2025: BNP Paribas (appendices, 5 February 2026), Societe Generale (6 February 2026), Barclays (2025 Results Announcement), Deutsche Bank (29 January 2026); Deutsche Bank media release of 7 July 2019.
- European Central Bank, euro foreign exchange reference rates, annual averages.
- Crisil Coalition Greenwich, description of its benchmarking services.

## 7.9 Exercises

**Exercise 7.1 ★.**

Compute Citigroup’s equities share of markets revenue in 2023 and 2025, and its change in percentage points.

**Solution of Exercise 7.1.**

$4\,037/(14\,612+4\,037)=21.6\%$ in 2023 and $5\,744/(16\,226+5\,744)=26.1\%$ in 2025: up 4.5 percentage points.

**Exercise 7.2 ★.**

Convert the British bank’s 2025 [FICC](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-ficc) income of £5 429 million to dollars at the ECB’s average rates.

**Solution of Exercise 7.2.**

$1.1300/0.8568=1.3189$ dollars per pound; $5\,429\times1.3189=\$7\,160$ million.

**Exercise 7.3 ★.**

Which desks of [Figure 7.1](#fig-in-bank-markets-divisions-tree) would you expect to employ the most model quants at a bank whose equities share is 60%, and why?

**Solution of Exercise 7.3.**

Equity derivatives: structured products and volatility books need pricing libraries, exotic hedging and model validation; then prime services (financing and margin models).

**Exercise 7.4 ★★.**

Morgan Stanley’s equities share rose from 56.5% to 64.2% between 2023 and 2025. Decompose the change: by how much did equities and fixed-income revenue each grow?

**Solution of Exercise 7.4.**

Equities revenue grew $15\,631/9\,986-1=56.5\%$, fixed income $8\,716/7\,673-1=13.6\%$: the share rose because equities grew four times as fast, not because fixed income shrank.

**Exercise 7.5 ★★.**

Why should the amounts of [Figure 7.2](#fig-in-bank-markets-divisions-mix) not be read as a ranking of the banks’ markets businesses?

**Solution of Exercise 7.5.**

Each bank’s lines are defined differently (financing in or out, advisory in the segment or not), amounts depend on the exchange rate, and size is not quality: the chart shows mix, and the order is by mix.

**Exercise 7.6 ★★.**

A [league table](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-league) ranks a bank first in a product with a 15% share of the [revenue pool](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-league). List four questions to ask before using that rank to compare employers.

**Solution of Exercise 7.6.**

Who published it and when; how the [revenue pool](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-league) was estimated and from whose submissions; which products, regions and period it covers; how close the next banks are (a rank without shares or intervals says little).

**Exercise 7.7 ★★★.**

*Coding.* Add the German bank as a row with zero equities and recompute the three most equity-heavy banks’ share of equities revenue if the German bank had kept an equities business earning € 3 billion. What changes, and why?

**Solution of Exercise 7.7.**

The German bank’s equities share would be $3/12.6=23.8\%$, below the top three, which do not change. Its $3.39 billion of equities revenue enlarges the total, so the top three’s share falls from 49.9% to 47.7%.

**Exercise 7.8 ★★★.**

*Find the flaw.* “The French bank earns 61% in equities and the US bank 26%: equities quants are paid more at the French bank.”

**Solution of Exercise 7.8.**

The mix says nothing about pay. It is a share of revenue, not revenue per quant; pay depends on the role, the level, the location and the bank’s pay structure (chapters 13–15). The claim confuses a product’s weight with its people’s pay.

## 7.10 Problem: Where the Equity Derivatives Are

**Problem 7.1.**

Weekend problem — where the equity derivatives are

A derivatives quant with offers from a US bank and a European bank wants to know which has the stronger equities business and how much weight to put on [league tables](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-league).

**Part I — The lines.**

1. Define [FICC](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-ficc) and the equities line, and name the desks of each.
2. Why are comparisons of shares within banks safer than comparisons of amounts across them?
3. Give the nine banks’ 2025 equities shares in order.
4. Give the four US banks’ 2023 equities shares and their changes to 2025.
5. What did the German bank announce in July 2019, and what does it report now?

**Part II — The conversion.**

6. Give the ECB’s 2025 average rates and the implied dollars per pound.
7. Convert the French banks’ 2025 equities revenue to dollars.
8. Give the nine banks’ total markets revenue and equities revenue in dollars.
9. Give the share of equities revenue earned by the three most equity-heavy banks.
10. Why is an average rate used rather than the year-end rate?

**Part III — The jobs.**

11. Which quant roles does a bank strong in equity derivatives employ, and why many per dollar of revenue?
12. Why is a bank’s product strength sticky?
13. What do banks publish about their quant headcounts?
14. Where can a candidate find indirect evidence of a bank’s quant roles and pay?
15. What happens to a product’s quant jobs when a bank exits it?

**Part IV — The verdict.**

16. State the *named result* : the range of equities shares across the nine banks in 2025, and the three most equity-heavy banks’ share of equities revenue.
17. Define a [revenue pool](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-league) and a [league table](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-league) .
18. What must a cited [league table](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-league) state?
19. Which of the quant’s two offers is at the bank with the stronger equities mix, if the US bank is the one at 26% and the European one at 61%?
20. In two sentences, what should the quant weigh beyond the mix?

**Solution of Problem 7.1.**

1. Bonds, rates and credit derivatives, FX, commodities and their financing; cash equities, equity derivatives, prime services.
2. Each bank defines its lines differently, so amounts are not like for like; a bank’s own split is consistent.
3. Morgan Stanley 64.2%, Societe Generale 60.8%, Goldman Sachs 53.2%, BNP Paribas 42.3%, Bank of America 41.2%, Barclays 37.3%, JPMorgan Chase 37.0%, Citigroup 26.1%, Deutsche Bank 0%.
4. 31.4%, 48.7%, 56.5%, 21.6%; changes $+5.6$ , $+4.5$ , $+7.7$ , $+4.5$ points.
5. Its exit from equities sales and trading; fixed income and currencies revenue of € 9.6 billion in 2025.
6. $1.1300 per euro, 0.8568 pounds per euro; $1.3189 per pound.
7. Societe Generale $4.11 billion, BNP Paribas $4.57 billion.
8. $173.9 billion, of which $72.7 billion equities.
9. 49.9%.
10. Revenue accrues over the year, so the year’s average rate converts it; a year-end rate reflects one day.
11. Structurers, library quants, desk strategists, validators: the products are complex, bespoke and model-dependent.
12. Libraries, staff, distribution and the existing book take years to build and cannot be moved quickly.
13. Nothing specific: total headcount, sometimes a segment’s headcount.
14. Labour-condition filings (titles and pay ranges) and remuneration disclosures (risk takers by business area).
15. They close at that employer; the people move to banks and firms that stay in the product.
16. From 0% to 64.2%; 49.9% of equities revenue at the three most equity-heavy banks.
17. The total revenue dealers earn from a product or client group, as an analyst estimates it; a ranking of dealers by their share of it, or of volumes or clients, by a publisher for a period.
18. Its publisher, its date and what it measures.
19. The European bank.
20. The mix shows where the bank’s derivatives work is; weigh the team, the role, pay and the bank’s commitment to the product, which filings show only through the years’ changes.

## 7.11 Interview questions

**Interview question 7.1 ★ bank.**

What does [FICC](#def-in-bank-markets-divisions-ficc) stand for, and how does its revenue differ in kind from equities revenue?

**Solution of Interview question 7.1.**

Fixed income, currencies and commodities. It is dominated by rates, credit and FX dealing with institutions and by financing, and is more balance-sheet intensive; equities revenue comes from cash trading, derivatives and prime brokerage, and moves more with share-market activity.

*What the interviewer is looking for: the products, and the balance-sheet difference.*

**Interview question 7.2 ★ bank, trader.**

Why might a bank’s equities revenue grow faster than its fixed-income revenue in a year of rising share prices and volatility?

**Solution of Interview question 7.2.**

Rising prices and volatility raise client trading, derivatives demand and prime balances; fixed income depends on rates and credit activity, which may not move with equities.

*What the interviewer is looking for: revenue drivers by product.*

**Interview question 7.3 ★★ bank.**

A bank sells structured notes to retail savers through its branches. Which desks and quants does that business need, from product design to hedging?

**Solution of Interview question 7.3.**

Structurers design the payoff; library quants price it; the exotic desk hedges it with desk strategists; model validators check the models; XVA and funding quants price the bank’s own risks; product control values the book.

*What the interviewer is looking for: the chain from design to hedging.*

**Interview question 7.4 ★★ bank, risk.**

Why would a bank exit equities sales and trading altogether rather than shrink it?

**Solution of Interview question 7.4.**

A small presence may not cover its fixed costs (technology, libraries, compliance) or earn its capital; exiting frees capital and costs at once, and a sub-scale franchise cannot compete for clients.

*What the interviewer is looking for: fixed costs and scale.*

**Interview question 7.5 ★★ researcher.**

You have four years of two revenue lines for nine banks. How would you test whether the mix is more stable than the level?

**Solution of Interview question 7.5.**

Compare the cross-bank dispersion of year-to-year changes in the share with that of changes in log revenue, or fit a panel with bank effects and compare residual variances; with four years, report ranges, not tests.

*What the interviewer is looking for: within-bank variation against levels, and honesty about four data points.*

**Interview question 7.6 ★★★ bank.**

Your equity-derivatives desk’s revenue rose 30% in a year. What part of that would you attribute to the market, what to the franchise, and how would you tell?

**Solution of Interview question 7.6.**

Compare with the market: volumes and volatility, and peers’ growth in the same line (the industry’s move); the rest is franchise, if it persists and shows in client flow and share rather than one-off trading gains.

*What the interviewer is looking for: benchmark against the market and peers.*