Western Europe is the most competitive region in the world for investment banking. The big five US firms, with the ambition and capability to claim global leadership, all lead transactions for the continent’s biggest companies as well as for US and Asian multinationals acquiring and raising capital in Europe.

It is in difficult times that the best franchises prove their mettle. JPMorgan’s formidable corporate and investment bank – now bolstered through its integration of commercial banking – was the one to beat over the last year. No rival can match its breadth, but the firm’s rejection of complacency means that it never stops improving.

In each of equity and debt capital markets, syndicated loans and M&A advisory, Truist Securities ranked higher than its super-regional peers in 2023, according to Dealogic. For its consistency and the progress it has made since the merger of SunTrust and BB&T that created the firm at the end of 2019, Truist wins the award for the US’s best super-regional investment bank this year.

To be the best investment bank in the fastest growing continent you can’t just be here or there, you must be everywhere.

In investment banking, the biggest event of the year was the €2 billion IPO of Hidroelectrica in Romania, Europe’s biggest IPO in 2023. This was Romania’s largest-ever IPO and played a role in reopening the market across the continent, thanks to a strong performance in the secondary market. It also helped reawaken the international capital market to the opportunities in central and eastern Europe.

Cross-border transactions involving multiple products that combine advisory, equity and debt financing are the bread and butter of a franchise like RBC Capital Markets. The firm’s performance in 2023 makes it a worthy winner of the award for Canada’s best investment bank.

For a global lender, Citi’s investment-banking presence in Africa is hard to compete with. The US firm has an onshore presence in 16 countries and covers 38 markets, with a dedicated team in Johannesburg supported by corporate bankers across the region.

Despite 2023 not being a year for the record books in investment banking and capital markets, clients still required careful and thoughtful advice even when they were not doing landmark deals. For its consistency and all-round excellence, JPMorgan takes the US award for best investment bank.

BofA Securities faced tough competition to retain the award for Latin America’s best investment bank. Deal flow in international capital markets transactions was disappointing and local markets absorbed a larger proportion of financing than normal; a trend that played to strong local franchises rather than the US firm. Nevertheless, BofA’s strength – especially in the Andean region, where the bank won best investment bank awards in Chile, Colombia and Peru – saw it fend off the local challenge.

HSBC dominated the region’s debt capital markets across the awards period, completing 52 DCM transactions worth a total of $10.3 billion, according to data from Dealogic. In equity capital markets, the London-headquartered lender came second, completing seven deals worth $2 billion. It also ranked in initial stock offerings, completing six IPOs worth $1.38 billion in total.

BofA Securities retains the award for Latin America’s best investment bank. Last year, the team, led by Alexandre Bettamio, co-head of global investment banking, and Augusto Urmeneta, president for Latin America and head of Latin America Investment banking, claimed the award for a strong regional performance. This year BofA went even further and took the country awards for Colombia, Peru and Brazil. The latter is easily the most important investment banking market in the region.

With the war in Ukraine adding to global volatility in capital markets, investment banking deal flow was weak in central and eastern Europe during 2022 and early 2023, especially for lower-rated names.

Morgan Stanley swallowed the market whole this year. There was precious little transaction activity that its investment bankers didn’t play a key role in.

In investment banking, Citi continues to benefit from the combination of a leading global network and an on the ground presence in Africa that is much bigger than most other international firms.

BNP Paribas has also had an excellent year in its corporate and institutional banking division, particularly in its home region. The division posted record revenues in 2022, of €16.5 billion, up 16% on the previous year. The equity and prime services, global banking and securities services units all saw new highs, while global markets had its best year since 2009.

Sometimes a franchise is suited to a moment. And in an awards period that began with the catastrophe unfolding in Ukraine, ended with a meltdown in US regional banking, and was accompanied throughout by eye-watering rate hikes, clients had no shortage of demands of their investment banks.

The most striking thing about this year’s winner of the US best super-regional investment bank award is that PNC Financial Services Group prides itself on not really having an investment bank.

Moribund primary equity capital markets and a rising interest rate environment meant that investment banks were tested more than ever in the past 12 months as they sought to give clients the options they needed in spite of poor conditions.

Veteran Morgan Stanley investment bankers describe this as the busiest downturn they have ever seen. That is because they have worked on the biggest and most transformative deals in 12 months of shifting values and at times paralyzing uncertainty. The firm has made some cuts, but its new leaders are shaking the business up and bringing in the talent that will be in demand once markets settle.

In some years this award is a close decision, with two or three banks vying for the prize. This wasn’t one of those years.

Goldman Sachs had a knockout year in Africa. The firm has invested heavily in the region, with a clear focus on a few core markets, notably South Africa, where it has moved to a larger office in Johannesburg and added foreign-exchange and fixed-income products that target corporate and institutional investors. In 2019, it joined forces with Investec to provide domestic equity trading services. A year later, it secured a licence to trade futures from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Last year was one that saw HSBC in its best light in this region. The Middle East is not always an easy place in which to run a full-service investment bank. Some years are stellar; in others the well runs dry. But with energy prices up and governments committed to economic and financial diversification, there has never been a better time to be in the UK lender’s shoes.

BofA Securities has had a busy year in which it demonstrated impressive breadth of deal-flow across countries, as well as regional leadership in two of the main product areas. Not only was the bank the best investment bank in Colombia and Peru, but it was also a close challenger for the Mexican and Brazilian awards. It is this unmatched geographical balance that makes BofA the region’s leading investment bank.

In investment banking, deals were already becoming harder to do in central and eastern Europe before Russia invaded Ukraine, as interest rates began to creep up in the second half of 2021. Executing deals has since become even harder both because of the war and because of those rate rises.

This was, as is the norm, a fight between Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. This year the award changes hands between them and goes to Morgan Stanley for the breadth of its successes.

While it has been a leader for many years in European debt and loan financing, BNP Paribas has in recent years built out its secondary markets businesses. It now includes a full service offering in equities as well as fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) across research, secondary markets, prime services, derivatives and capital markets.

The businesses for which Goldman Sachs is most renowned dominated investment banking last year – but so much else is going on. The firm is enjoying the pay-off from a long effort to expand middle-market coverage and has successfully built a transaction banking platform from scratch that it can now scale up.

Goldman Sachs’s investment bank division excelled during the awards period thanks to a targeted focus on growth sectors such as healthcare, technology and financial sponsor business. This paid off handsomely on its home turf, where the bank dominated the Americas M&A league tables during the awards period, working on 582 deals with a total value of $1.6 trillion for a 30.72% market share. This is slightly ahead of the same period last year where it took 29.52% market share from 408 deals worth $1.15 trillion together.

Truist Securities, the corporate and investment banking division of Truist Financial Corporation, wins Euromoney’s inaugural award for best super-regional investment bank in the US. The award reflects the key role it plays in the domestic financial system, providing critical funding and extending capital-raising services to large corporates and small and medium-sized enterprises.

BMO Capital Markets is Canada’s best investment bank this year, rewarding the momentum that has propelled it up the advisory and equity capital markets league tables while also gaining ground in debt capital markets.