 Awards for Excellence 2010 |
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| Best Emerging markets investment bank: Credit Suisse | |
| Also nominated: JPMorgan and Rothschild |
Last summer when Credit Suisse’s most senior executives sat down to assess the bank’s strategy their focus centred on three areas: US investment banking; fixed-income sales and trading; and last but by no means least emerging markets.
Although the Swiss firm has been one of the leading investment banks in emerging markets for a number of years, its key managers – including Brady Dougan, group chief executive; Paul Calello, investment bank head; and Eric Varvel, then head of EMEA and acting chief executive of the investment bank – felt that it wasn’t maximizing its potential.
Initially, attention was paid to the Middle East, an obvious region for the firm to build its strategy around given that sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority and Saudi conglomerate Olayan have stakes in the bank. One of the big trends the bank’s executives could see was the increase in capital flows between the Middle East and Asia, be they through M&A, private placements, IPOs, debt issuance or government-to-government trades.