This April, Meghan Graper became global co-head of debt capital markets for London-headquartered Barclays, where she shares leadership responsibilities with Barbara Mariniello.
The promotion came after Graper's nearly two decades on Barclays's U.S. investment grade syndicate team, frequently flying to Europe and Asia in order to build relationships with clients interested in U.S. markets.
Graper's new role is "more of a seamless transition than I might have imagined because of the synergies that already existed between syndicate and capital market coverage at Barclays," she said.
It also has continued the banker's continent hopping — Graper, for example, had a recent, multiplane jaunt from Paris to Tulsa.
Graper's main focus is carving out multimillion and billion-dollar debt offerings even in volatile markets. Last October, for example, Graper led the bookrunning team for UnitedHealth Group's $9 billion debt offering. The move enabled UnitedHealth to refinance existing payment obligations, and eventually purchase Change Healthcare, a health care technology firm focused on revenue and payment management.
Timing was everything in the UnitedHealth offering, Graper said, as the client monitored central bank activity and changes to interest rates, the rate of inflation and the performance of various stock markets. Following more than a month of volatility, UnitedHealth elected to move forward with its issuance on a particularly opportunistic late October day when markets rallied and there was greater demand for credit.
"It was about finding the right entry point," Graper said. "Looking at all the different pieces and seeing how they add up to the right name and the right trade at the right time."
Graper is often collaborating with rival banks. The UnitedHealth deal, for example, involved working with Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
After earning her bachelor's at Duke University, Graper moved to New York and began her career at Lehman Brothers in 2002, where she'd been a summer associate. She moved to Barclays when the bank acquired the remaining parts of Lehman after the investment bank's collapse in 2008. Graper has worked in the same Manhattan building for her entire career.
Reflecting on her career, Graper said that she is trying to do more now than just move up the corporate ladder, such as improving the quality of life for early career professionals, particularly female bankers.
Barclays has a strong recruitment program for prospective women bankers who are just out of school. But there is still work to be done on the intermediate level of "supporting colleagues as they build the right skills and networks to plan for their longer-term professional ambitions," she said.
One step Graper has taken is to give midcareer female bankers speaking roles at banking events and otherwise encourage them to become more visible representatives of Barclays.
Graper said that Barclays and other banks must change, noting that some businesses today "give banking teams annual report cards evaluating the diversity of their coverage teams."
