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LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase kept itstop spot for investment banking in the first quarter afterbringing in $6.9 billion in revenues, putting it ahead of fourrivals tied for second place, a study showed on Wednesday.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citigroup made the strongest gains in the January-March period compared toa year ago, lifting them to joint second spot with Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, according to industryanalytics firm Coalition.
Barclays ranked sixth, followed by Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley.
The industry is paying particularly close attention torankings data as banks are restructuring operations to cut costsand improve profitability.
JPMorgan brought in $4.3 billion in revenue from fixedincome, currencies and commodities (FICC) trading, whichaccounts for more than half of investment bank revenues. Citiand Deutsche were second and third in FICC income.
Goldman Sachs topped equities revenue with JPMorgan and UBS, each bringing in about $1.4 billion in the quarter,Coalition estimated.
Goldman and Bank of America topped the rankings for advisoryincome, each getting $1.4 billion in revenue.
Investment banking income is often volatile, and revenue atthe start of this year was down from year-ago levels but up froma poor fourth quarter.
The top five U.S. banks reported investment bank revenuesdown 7 percent on the year, but up 35 percent on the fourthquarter. Europe's big four investment banks - Deutsche Bank,Barclays, UBS and Credit Suisse - reported resilient firstquarters, as cost-cutting helped them to keep pace with theirU.S. rivals and ease concern they were falling behind.
Coalition said JPMorgan was the top investment bank lastyear with revenues of $24.1 billion out of $159 billion for thetop 10 banks it assesses.
It says its study is based on public information from banks'results and benchmarked to a common standard to produce a top 10league table. (Reporting by Steve Slater; editing by Stephen Nisbet)
