LONDON, March 27 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs became thetop commodities bank last year, overtaking rival JP Morgan, a consultancy said on Friday.
Goldman had the largest commodity revenues of any investmentbank last year, financial industry analytics firm Coalition saidin a report. It did not give a breakdown of commodity revenuesfor each bank in its ranking, which showed JP Morgan in secondand Morgan Stanley in third place.
Goldman has stuck with commodities while rivals such as JPMorgan have pulled back. In January, Goldman highlighted it as abright spot in the bank's broader fixed-income trading business,which had a rough quarter.
JP Morgan last year sold its physical commodities businessto Mercuria for $3.5 billion because of rising regulatory andpolitical pressure.
Last month, Coalition said commodities revenue at the top 10investment banks climbed by 9 percent in 2014, reversing threeyears of declines, due to increased activity in energy marketsas oil went into freefall,
Revenue earned by leading banks from commodity trading,selling derivatives to investors and other activities in thesector rose to $4.9 billion from $4.5 billion in 2013.
Despite the recovery in top banks' commodities revenue lastyear, it was still just over a third of the $14.1 billion theyracked up in 2008 at the height of the commodities boom.
Banks including Credit Suisse continued an exodus fromcommodities trading in 2014 due partly to tougher regulation andhigher capital requirements after the global financial crisis.
Coalition tracks the following banks: Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP Paribas,Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS. (Reporting by Eric Onstad)
Barclays (BARC)