Pakistan
LATEST ARTICLES
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The 34th annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll is a Vox Populi poll that identifies the leading brokerages for equities research, sales and trading in Asia. Voters are institutional investors who represent fund management firms, wealth managers, hedge funds, pension funds, and insurance companies that trade in Asia.
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Pakistan has been trying to improve financial inclusion for the last 20 years with little success. Are new digital licences the answer?
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The 33rd annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll is a Vox Populi poll that identifies the leading brokerages for equities research, sales and trading in Asia. Voters are institutional investors who represent fund management firms, wealth managers, hedge funds, pension funds, and insurance companies that trade in Asia.
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Credit Suisse’s willingness to take Pakistan far more seriously than many of its global peers has paid off handsomely in the past year.
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Arif Habib’s hopes for the stock market in Pakistan were dashed this year. Granted, its analysts were not alone in predicting that after a bruising 2021, the KSE-100 Index would bounce back in 2022. But AHL’s prediction that the market would make history, topping 55,000 points, grabbed headlines.
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In its 15 years of existence, JS Bank has come to be known for many things. It is one of Pakistan’s fastest-growing financial institutions, a leader in the digital banking space and a generator of insurance products. But the bank’s most important influence may be how its strong commitment to diversity and financial inclusion is prodding peers to follow its lead.
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Timing is everything when it comes to investing. So United Bank’s decision to bet big on building digital platforms in the two years before the pandemic hit was apposite.
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Bank of Punjab is a commercial banking power that has acquired a solid reputation for serving clients and making markets in Pakistan, particularly in recent years after Zafar Masud took over as chief executive in early 2020.
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HBL is Pakistan’s first commercial bank, having been set up in 1941, before moving its operations to the country in 1947 at the request of newly independent Pakistan’s first leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It is now the nation’s largest private-sector bank, and winner of Asiamoney’s award for the best domestic bank in Pakistan this year.
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MCB Bank, one of Pakistan’s oldest financial names, has travelled a rather circuitous path to become a corporate banking mainstay. It was founded in 1947 as a private-sector institution, then nationalized in 1974 and privatized in 1991. Shoaib Mumtaz, who was appointed chief executive at the end of 2021, has been with the bank since he joined a year after its privatization.
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Since 1863, Standard Chartered has consistently brought the world to Pakistan’s lively economy. As fate would have it, the bank’s 150th year as a financial bridge to the south Asian market is proving to be among the toughest.
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In January, local media buzzed with news of a partnership between Allied Bank, non-profit finance outfit Karandaaz Pakistan and tech firm Techlogix Mobility. The plan was to increase financial inclusion, one small and medium-sized enterprise at a time.
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Imran Khan’s government was toppled in April, but it didn’t take long for its replacement to make a new deal with the IMF, just as many have done before. How can Pakistan break its IMF addiction?
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Zafar Masud survived a plane crash a month after he took over as Bank of Punjab’s chief executive. The experience pushed him to double down on his beliefs – and take this regional Pakistani bank to the next level.
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The 32nd annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll is a Vox Populi poll that identifies the leading brokerages for equities research, sales and trading in Asia. Voters are institutional investors who represent fund management firms, wealth managers, hedge funds, pension funds, and insurance companies that trade in Asia.
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Meezan has rapidly become one of Pakistan’s leading banks, thanks to a couple of early acquisitions.
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Asiamoney has selected two senior women who have advanced in Asia’s highly competitive banking industry. Their stories throw light on how the sector is tackling gender diversity.
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A much-needed and long-overdue shake-up is starting to pay off, but National Bank of Pakistan’s chief executive is still fighting hard against the old ways of doing business.
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Allied Bank (ABL) has long put both employees and the wider public at the top of its corporate and social responsibility (CSR) agenda. That was no different in 2020 during the Covid crisis.
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For the third year in a row, JS Bank is Asiamoney’s best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) because of its unwavering focus on this part of the market during a particularly tough period.
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Pakistan’s banks, like others worldwide, faced a big test in 2020 when Covid struck and disrupted the traditional way to bank and do business. But numerous banks managed to capitalize on the pivot to online and digital banking, thanks to the efforts made ahead of the pandemic to modernize services.
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Credit Suisse, which has operated in Pakistan since the 1990s, has an enviable relationship with the Ministry of Finance, having arranged the government’s first loan in 2013.
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National Bank of Pakistan is regarded by some rivals as one to start watching closely when it comes to its corporate and investment banking franchise, thanks to efforts to transform it from a staid, balance sheet-led state-owned bank to a modern and more independent firm.
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Habib Bank’s rapid growth, despite the disruption of Covid-19, is nothing short of remarkable. Total income in 2020 jumped 28% to $1 billion, while profits before tax soared 83% to $331.8 million. Net assets rose about 18% to $1.7 billion.
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The 31st annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll invited chief investment officers, fund managers and investment analysts to take part. Voters represented fund management houses, hedge fund & private equity firms, insurance companies and wealth management houses in Asia, Europe and North America.
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The country is now in the grip of another bailout programme and Reza Baqir, the new central bank governor, sees parallels for the nation from his last job at the fund.
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Last year was a big one for JS Bank when it came to corporate and social responsibility.
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JS Bank does not even rank among the top 10 largest banks in Pakistan, but when it comes to lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, it is up there in the top three by size.
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United Bank Limited (UBL) had a remarkable performance in 2019 thanks to the digital strategy it put in place about 18 months ago.
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Credit Suisse is a pioneer in Pakistan: it is one of the first bulge-bracket investment banks to start coverage of the south Asian country.
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Arif Habib Limited is among the leading brokerages and investment banking firms in Pakistan. During Asiamoney’s awards period, the non-banking finance company made its mark in corporate finance and advisory, even though growth concerns and rising debt put pressure on the economy.
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Since Muhammad Aurangzeb took over as president and chief executive nearly two years ago, Pakistan’s biggest commercial bank has turned around and moved on from the compliance and reputational issues of the past.
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The 30th annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll invited chief investment officers, fund managers and investment analysts to take part. Voters represented fund management houses, insurance companies, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and wealth managers from around the world.
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Created to promote the social development of women alongside its commercial interests, First Women Bank has led the way in financial inclusion.
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HBL is controlled by the philanthropic foundation of the Aga Khan, the billionaire spiritual leader of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam: so not surprisingly, corporate and social responsibility is considered part of the bank’s DNA.
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Four years since JS Bank relaunched its SME business, the strategy is paying off. While the small and medium-sized enterprise business at much bigger rival HBL might be larger, JS Bank’s SME division is now ranked the third largest in the country and is attracting attention – and compliments – from competitors for the rapid emergence of its shrewd relationship-centred operations.
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The central State Bank of Pakistan calculated that branchless banking in Pakistan grew roughly 10% in the three months to the end of September 2018, the most recent period reviewed, with a total of 43.1 million accounts.
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The central State Bank of Pakistan calculated that branchless banking in Pakistan grew roughly 10% in the three months to the end of September 2018, the most recent period reviewed, with a total of 43.1 million accounts.
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In a country where the wealthy have always preferred to have their cash offshore – in Dubai, Singapore or London – Standard Chartered pioneered domestic wealth management in an effort to keep it at home. And that’s been a good strategy for a London-based bank that, by dint of its colonial heritage, operates with a local mandate in Pakistan, allowing local access with perceived international solidity.
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In Pakistan, when it comes to international banks, there is Standard Chartered – and then there’s daylight. Shazad Dada’s outfit has been in the country since 1863, and has recently seen off StanChart’s traditional competitors in the south Asia region, notably HSBC and Citibank (the latter the alma mater of so many Pakistani bankers).
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In a faltering economy, HBL’s corporate and investment banking business managed to stand tall in 2018.
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After a miserable year in 2017, Pakistan’s biggest bank bounced back in 2018 to become, well, bigger still.
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Pakistan is a bailout addict, having spent 22 of the last 30 years in the fund’s intensive care, but can Imran Khan’s new government break that dependency? His finance minister says he has the cure.
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The new chief executive of Pakistan’s biggest bank has wasted no time in overhauling it after it was kicked out of the US and fined $225 million in 2017.
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Expanded rankings and additional categories, including other comparative and bespoke data, are available for purchase. Please contact Mee Ling Lee at meeling.lee@euromoneyasia.com for our data packages.
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The 29th annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll invited chief investment officers, fund managers and investment analysts to take part. Voters represented fund management houses, insurance companies, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and wealth managers from around the world. A total of 6,540 valid individual responses from 3,100 different institutions, including 411 hedge funds, were received.
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It is perhaps no surprise that in a supposedly democratic nation that has been ruled by generals for 33 of its 71 years of independence, the military has an outsized role in Pakistan’s economy.
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As a woman running one of Pakistan’s leading banks, Sima Kamil has already made her mark. But her goal is for UBL to snatch top place, elbowing aside HBL, her former employer.
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Allied Bank (ABL) is a quiet achiever in Pakistan’s bank corporate social responsibility efforts. It focuses on distant, low-profile and often-dangerous parts of the country, notably the backward and overlooked region of Balochistan in Pakistan’s remote west.
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It’s not just Pakistan’s biggest companies that turn to HBL for help. Over the last year, the bank has benefited from a sharper focus on small and medium-sized enterprises, and in doing so has extended its dominance as Pakistan’s largest SME lender.
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It has been a busy year for Telenor Bank, the former Tameer Bank, which has pioneered mobile phone-enabled micro-payments in Pakistan on the Easypaisa platform.
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In an admittedly limited field of foreign banks in Pakistan, Shazad Dada’s Standard Chartered Pakistan continues to have few peers. Assets crossed PRs500 billion ($4.5 billion) during the year as pre-tax profits fell 12% to PRs13.5 billion, from PRs15.3 billion. Dada blames this on tighter margins and re-pricing within his investment portfolio, in a “challenging” market.
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Already the largest commercial bank in Pakistan, HBL’s main focus in 2017 was to power up its corporate lending business in the domestic market as it fought fires from regulators overseas.
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After years of chasing HBL and United Bank, MCB may be on the verge of becoming Pakistan’s banking leader. In June, MCB formally began its absorption of Pakistan’s 11th biggest bank, NIB Bank, and is reaping the benefits: total deposits jumped 24% to cross PRs1 trillion ($9 billion) for the year, while assets climbed 23% to PRs1.37 trillion.