In the old days BCC (Before the Credit Crunch), building a syndicate book for benchmark bonds used to be simple. You relied on hedge funds, other asset managers and proprietary traders to take up the issue, and walked away with a tidy fee.

However, as record amounts of corporate bonds began to be issued at the start of this year, it became clear that a seismic shift in buyers of this debt was occurring. Banks were snapping up bonds across the spectrum.