- About half of all share sales by public companies this year have been block trades, writes Corrie Driebusch, versus an average of about one-third over the past five years, and just one-fifth over the past decade.
- To review, a block trade involves a bank buying a large chunk of stock from a company or its P-E backers at a discount, in the hopes of unloading it piece-by-piece later that day at a markup.
- The increase in block trades, of course, comes as business slows at any number of other bank profit centers, particularly fixed-income trading.
- For the most part, block deals have mostly proved profitable this year, with an average one-day return of 0.5%, according to Dealogic. The leaders in U.S. block trades this year are Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS) and JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), with Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), and Citigroup (NYSE:C) also notable participants.