LONDON, April 2, 2026, 14:23 BST
Barclays PLC has signed on to SpaceX’s planned June initial public offering, joining a 21-bank lineup for a share sale that could value Elon Musk’s rocket company at about $1.75 trillion. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are serving as active bookrunners, or lead banks that steer the sale, while Barclays is among banks in smaller roles, people familiar with the process said. Barclays declined to comment. 1
The mandate matters because it puts the British lender on one of the year’s biggest U.S. fee opportunities just as Barclays leans harder on America to lift returns. On Feb. 10, the bank said 50% to 60% of investment-bank revenue comes from the United States, and it is targeting return on tangible equity — a profitability measure that strips out intangible assets — above 14% by 2028, alongside more than 15 billion pounds of shareholder distributions over 2026-2028; analysts said those goals depend heavily on U.S. growth. 2
The timing is useful. Companies raised $211 billion through share sales in the first quarter, the most since 2021, while IPO proceeds rose 47% to $44 billion, LSEG data showed. “The resilience that we’ve seen in this market, given all of the turbulence that’s out there, is quite remarkable,” said John Kolz, Barclays’ global head of equity capital markets, though Deutsche Bank’s Saadi Soudavaar warned that second-quarter flotations still depend on volatility subsiding. 3
On March 26, people familiar with the structure said SpaceX had been carving the offering up by investor type and geography rather than letting banks compete across the whole book, an unusual setup for Wall Street. Under that plan, Barclays was expected to handle UK distribution as Musk weighed giving individual investors as much as 30% of the float; “This is one of those lifetime moments in which people may say they just have to get in,” said Rowan Taylor, managing partner at Liberty Hall Capital Partners. 4
For Barclays, the SpaceX slot comes after a patchier run in investment banking. On Oct. 22, the bank said fees from deals fell 2% in the third quarter even as trading income rose, and CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan said the period “was dominated by a few large deals that we were not fortunate enough to be on.” 5
But the backdrop can turn fast. European shares fell on Thursday and banks dropped about 2% as hopes for a quick end to the Iran war faded, with State Street’s Marija Veitmane saying investors were starting to worry more about growth. “Now we begin to worry about growth outcomes,” she said. 6
Barclays also still faces costs closer to home. On March 30, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority set a final 9.1 billion pound industry bill for mis-sold car finance, and Barclays was among the lenders in scope; the bank had already taken an additional 235 million pound motor-finance charge last October, taking money set aside for the issue to 325 million pounds. 7
Barclays remains a diversified bank spanning UK consumer and corporate banking, wealth, investment banking and a U.S. consumer arm. That breadth means a marquee U.S. mandate is about more than one fee cheque: it is a live test of whether Barclays can keep winning the kind of mandates that help justify its push for higher returns. 8
