Meghan Graper had planned to be a documentary filmmaker before a summer internship opened her eyes to the creativity of finance work.
Graper was in college when she took the internship at Lehman Brothers that changed her mind about finance and her career.
"I took advanced math classes and whatnot all the way starting in high school, but I didn't really see the creative approach to it until I got to Lehman, and the people I met there and the minds I met there were enough to compel me to stick with it. And here I am," she said.
From the class of analysts who joined Lehman with Graper just after 9/11, there are now eight people who are running various businesses at Barclays.
Graper was promoted to her current role as managing director and global co-head of debt capital markets last year. The main challenge for her business in the months ahead, she said, will be how to advise clients in a volatile interest rate environment, in addition to shifting geopolitical risks and the outsize influence from central bank decisions.
A key differentiator for her group, she said, is its skills in arranging for cross-currency borrowing: bringing dollar borrowers to the European or Asian markets, or bringing European and Asian borrowers to the dollar market, for example.
"We're not incentivized to advise buying into any given market unless it's the absolute most efficient course of action for them," Graper said.
Last year, Graper's group was able to wrest market share from its competitors. Barclays' global debt capital markets business grew 13% in 2023, and the bank jumped to fourth place from sixth place on Dealogic's ranking by global bonds underwriting volume.
Graper spends 40% of her time talking with investors and 60% with debt issuers, trying to better understand where investors are willing to deploy their cash and how that aligns with the financing needs of corporations issuing debt. And her advice changes daily, based on the shifting factors at play, she said. "If you aren't plugged in to what's happening in the secondary markets, you can't advise an issuer how to raise that money in the primary market."
Graper sees a clear gender gap across Wall Street firms, and part of the solution for advancing women recruitment and retention efforts in the industry needs to come from transparent hiring statistics, Graper said.
"I can't even think fundamentally how you'd approach any challenge or business opportunity without tracking outcome and establishing barometers by which to gauge progress or lack thereof," she said. "Knowing what we're aiming for — and having tangible data that either underscores where we're headed or what we've done well or not well — is how we unlock the full potential of what that diversity of thought can afford us."
Another piece of the solution to the gender gap issue needs to be providing a better middle pipeline for women to fill executive positions, she said. Clients are demanding that the banking industry "close the gap and deliver diversity of thought," and they're using their own report cards to rate firms.
"We're a results-oriented industry and are clearly lagging there," Graper said. "If we can't quantify and celebrate the win, it's hard to encourage leaders to invest in contributing to the outcome." For Barclays, the goal is for women to hold 33% of its senior positions by the end of 2025. Graper's debt capital markets group has already exceeded the mark.
