The last time Credit Suisse was neck and neck with the likes of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as a top underwriter of equity offerings, the Zurich-based bank still had the words First Boston in its name.
But this year, it has one major Wall Street trend to thank for putting it back in the top three for the first time since 2005: a boom in so-called blank cheque companies.
Special purpose acquisition companies, or Spacs, have grown from a niche part of equity markets to become a popular alternative route to public markets. Such vehicles raise money from investors with the aim of finding a private company to buy; if the sponsors fail to do that within a certain period, the Spac is dissolved and the money returned to shareholders.