Goldman Sachs took the top spot among the four largest U.S. equity underwriters in the third quarter. Its equity capital markets revenue hit $666 million for the period ended Sept. 30, a 43% increase from the same stretch last year.
Among those peers, only Morgan Stanley posted a year-over-year drop in equity underwriting fees, falling 19% as IPOs and block trades weighed on results. In contrast to its major Wall Street rivals, Morgan Stanley sat out the $26.5 billion U.S. debut by SK Hynix Inc., a South Korean memory chipmaker, which marked the largest-ever debut by a foreign company on an American exchange.
Companies selling stock largely pushed ahead despite higher interest rates and choppy trading in AI-linked names. Some IPO hopefuls paused plans, but many rode technology enthusiasm that lifted underwriters' revenue.
During the September quarter, Goldman worked on SK Hynix's marquee flotation, Intel Corp.'s $23 billion equity offering, and large convertible deals for AI cloud operators CoreWeave Inc. and Nebius Group NV. Goldman's tally would have been higher if Oura Inc.'s IPO, where it was in the lead, had proceeded.
Across the five banks, ECM fees totaled $2.5 billion, up 13% from a year earlier, and not far off recent highs. Still, that haul was nearly one third below the $3.6 billion booked in the hyperactive June quarter, when the record $86.2 billion SpaceX IPO generated $500 million in underwriting fees.
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Bloomberg has reported that Morgan Stanley is lined up to take a leading role in a potential record-setting IPO by Claude developer Anthropic PBC as early as next month. The firm's wealth management arm is also seeing fund flows tied to its work on recent IPOs.
Citigroup posted the biggest rebound among its peers, with equity capital markets revenue climbing 77% to $343 million compared with the same quarter in 2025, helped by a prominent role on the SK Hynix deal.
Goldman CEO David Solomon told analysts, "There are obviously a handful of IPOs that didn't move forward, but when you look at ECM revenues for the quarter and the last few quarters, they're running meaningfully above both five-year and 10-year averages." He added that advances in technology along with AI infrastructure efforts offer "real good ballast" for future capital markets business.
Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick said AI remains a powerful engine, noting that "Even with AI infrastructure spending running at $1 trillion a year, the cycle still has many years to run." He added, "Sometimes the technology will be ahead of what the market will accept, and sometimes vice-versa, and we have to be cognizant of what the market will accept at a given time."
AI is still the spark plug for new stock sales and convertibles, even with rates high and tech valuations wobbling. That mix is lifting underwriter revenue now, but the pace from here depends on how much of today's pipeline actually lists. If you watch sectors tied to AI and big-ticket offerings, expect the deal calendar to nudge sentiment and pricing in the weeks ahead.
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