Best bank - BPH PBK
Best equity house - CDM Pekao
Best debt house - Citigroup
Best M&A - Bank Austria/CA-IB
Polish banks have not had an easy year. The economy is growing slowly, and bad loans continue to drag down banks' balance sheets. Kredyt Bank, owned by KBC, had a particularly tough time. It lost around e100 million on non-performing loans last year, which cost its senior managers their jobs.
BRE Bank also had a tough year in corporate banking. Even Pekao, Poland's largest commercial bank, found the going rough, with net interest income in Q1 2003 down 20% year on year, and operating income down 24%.
One bank, however, has actually improved its position in the first quarter - BPH PBK, which takes the best bank award.
In Q1 2003, the strengths of the merger between BPH and PBK, owned by HVB and Bank Austria respectively, really started to show. All the analysts spoken to picked out the bank as the strongest performer this year. It completed the merger of its IT systems in record time, and turned in some strong results in Q1 2003. Net profit rose 79% and operating costs fell 3.1%.