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Banks are learning about the damage that being on the wrong side of environmental issues can cause.

No matter where head office is based, Euromoney’s best regional bank, HSBC, is fundamentally about Asia. In 2016, the region contributed $10.6 billion out of global profit before tax of $17.3 billion – two thirds of the pie.

Euromoney has never before given an award in Afghanistan, but the story of Azizi Bank is compelling. Formed by an ethnic business group in 2006 and owned by Dubai’s Azizi Group, it took over the Development Bank of Afghanistan from the central bank in 2009, then India’s Punjab National Bank in 2014. It is Afghanistan’s largest commercial bank, with more than 140 branches and a million customers, and employs 2,300 people, 17% of them women, which does not sound a lot but matters in Afghanistan.

With Brexit now upon us, as warnings abound of the damage it will inflict on the UK economy and the country’s financial sector, Euromoney follows its instincts and puts two British banks on our short list to be recognized as the world’s best.

Have HSBC and Citi found a way to cut costs and maintain revenues in Latin America? If so, local banks will not accept that quietly.

Stuart Gulliver’s six-year transformation of HSBC has created a global bank that works, rather than one that merely exists. And through that process, the bank has continued to deliver impressive returns.

World's best bank

It might not have the same level of market presence across North America as some of its international competitors, but HSBC’s push forward in the region over the last 12 months has secured it Euromoney’s award for North America’s best bank for transaction services.

Euromoney challenges Stuart Gulliver over his active management of the HSBC portfolio and why he has not exited retail banking in more countries, given that retail banking is a scale business, which HSBC lacks everywhere outside Hong Kong and the UK.

Financing, and particularly debt, is one area where European investment banks can still have a grip on their home markets. Many are already reaping the benefits of having shifted to a more capital-efficient deployment of their balance sheets.

The bank’s expertise in debt capital markets and transaction banking have helped it excel in emerging markets this year.

Euromoney names HSBC as the World’s Best Bank and Morgan Stanley as the World’s Best Investment Bank; UniCredit’s chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier wins Banker of the Year award.

As Stuart Gulliver’s time as chief executive of HSBC runs down, the moment has come to acknowledge his achievement in managing the remarkable transformation of one of the world’s biggest, most complex banks. Once a diffuse portfolio of unconnected banking franchises, it now starts to look much more like the jewel it should be: a properly managed network that can serve customers and reward shareholders by handling global trade and capital flows.

HSBC’s Sino-foreign joint venture has been approved at last, almost two years after the project was announced. It is the first such venture to have foreign control but what exactly has HSBC won?

Wave of IPOs could propel ‘mid-sized’ banks; HSBC emerging as a potentially serious player.

Overall market share Overall banks only Overall non-bank liquidity providers only Spot/forward market share Swap market share Options market share Emerging market currencies market share

Euromoney magazine has released the results of its 39th annual foreign exchange ranking, the most comprehensive quantitative and qualitative annual study available on the FX markets.

Commercial International Bank wins region’s best bank award; winners reflect year of reform and easing bank liquidity; record year for Gulf debt capital markets sees HSBC retaining investment-banking title, while local and international banks do battle for regional and domestic awards.

As in much of the Gulf, banking conditions in Bahrain were difficult over the last year. Despite these challenges, Ahli United Bank did well.

The region’s investment banking market, as ever, remains more tilted to the Gulf, which has recently been less active in blockbuster sovereign wealth-fund M&A mandates and more vigorous in public-sector financing as the lower oil price has bitten.

HSBC sees new lending opportunities in the increasingly digital exchange of purchase orders and invoices between big companies and their smaller suppliers.

Lost amid disappointing 2016 results, HSBC’s Global Banking and Markets (GB&M) division has already hit the group 10% return on equity (ROE) target and holds out hope for more to come.

Who’s leading the field? Who’s coming up on the rails? Which outsiders are worth ranking? The race is on for one of the biggest jobs in global banking… or is it?

Attempts to build a North America business have left egg on the faces of many senior HSBC executives, but now, with two key differentiators – its big balance sheet and global network – it may have figured out how to be an investment bank in the US.

Some of Europe’s biggest banks have joined behind KBC’s blockchain prototype to help SMEs increase trade across the continent.

More than 2,000 private banks took part in the 2017 Euromoney private banking survey. See who’s up and who’s down globally, regionally and by country.

UBS Wealth Management voted best global private bank; new regional winners; private banks less bullish on revenues; non-bank competition a minor concern.

For a non-US bank to be a success in the US, it has to get its ambitions right first.

Deutsche Bank held onto its global trade finance crown for the third year running, but it lost out in some of the regional placings. The 2017 survey attracted nearly double the number of voters compared with 2016.