Awards for Excellence 2016
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While bulge bracket banks have the edge in pure investment banking terms in CEE, the leading house in terms of overall corporate exposure and activity in the region remains UniCredit, which wins this year’s award for best financing house. Even after retreating from a couple of markets following the financial crisis, the Italian group still has large commercial banking operations in 11 countries across the region, including leading franchises in Poland, Russia and Turkey.
Combined with a healthy appetite for putting balance sheet to work and in-depth sector expertise at group level, this has made UniCredit the leading provider of financing to CEE corporates. By the end of 2015, the bank’s exposure to the segment stood at €55.9 billion, well ahead of any of its European or US peers, while, in this awards period, UniCredit once again easily topped the regional league tables for syndicated loans.
It is not all about numbers, however. UniCredit has also consistently demonstrated its ability to provide a broad range of financing solutions to clients in CEE, from simple term loans to structured and leveraged products.