July 2014
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LATEST ARTICLES
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In 1999 this magazine described the fight for best bank in Asia as a battle royal between HSBC and Citi.
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ANZ wins best bank in Australia as it grew assets at a healthy lick during the awards period and posted an impressive return on equity. ANZ is also the most valuable banking brand in Australia, according to a recent survey. Last year, it posted a fourth straight year of record annual profit, this time with an 11% rise year-on-year to $6.3 billion.
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Few houses have the wherewithal to be top five players across all asset classes in emerging markets. They should target opportunistic higher margin business.
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L’Roubi may be a chameleon when it comes to his sartorial mores but Bank of England governor, Mark Carney resembles a chameleon when it comes to his views on UK interest rates.
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Expansion beyond their domestic market highlights the ambition of Nigeria’s banks, but their success will be hampered without African cohesion.
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Latin America’s markets are as good as anyone can remember. If you’re an issuer, that is. Investors are not celebrating.
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Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank, has firmly rebuffed the bears and those who believed in him made a fortune with timely purchases of periphery European bonds and stock markets.
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The spillover from the proposed voiding of state guarantees on subordinate debt of Austria’s Hypo Alpe Adria could hit bonds of other banks across Europe.
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Banks find the grass is greener with dedicated environmentally friendly bonds.
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“I’ve got tickets for the world cup final. My boss was on the phone asking me about that and I told him that it was a client event I had booked in six years ago. It was probably a mistake. He pointed out that I didn’t work here six years ago”
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Universal banks have been trying harder than ever to make investment, corporate and transaction bankers work as one team to capture more business and deliver a better all-round service to their clients.
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“What’s so bad about being good at financing? Are our critics saying that M&A advisory is a skill but that financing is not? Trust me, you can be bad at financing. You can read the markets wrong, be too quick to commit or not commit fast enough. Having the best read on where your clients can raise the money to get a strategic transaction done, how quickly, in what amounts and with what degree of certainty is vital”
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AA slumps as PE exits; secondary buyouts down 25%
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ESG bond to tap into demand for ethical investment; deal ‘sets new water mark’ on sustainability
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Tetangco talks up booming economy; asset bubbles the only danger.
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Crown dependency aspires to triple-A; investors love sovereign with reserves not debt.
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Latin America’s fastest growing economy; international banks eye infrastructure projects.
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Authorities more strident on standards; wealth fund criticized for lack of due diligence.
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US high yield investors add to demand; lack of supply will stretch into autumn
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Louis Dreyfus to repurchase 90% of deal; firm commitment IPOs under question.
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Statement of intent rather than a need for funds; DMO defends choice of leads.
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Funding levels ‘too good to ignore’; return of Russian supply no threat, say bankers.
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Turkey’s economy is growing fast and the country has a large number of infrastructure projects in the pipeline. But with its corporates also on the hunt for more funding, the country’s banks cannot meet all the demand themselves.
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While other industries have embraced technology to win clients and become more efficient, wealth management and private banking are still finding their way. Euromoney gathered leading private bankers and nontraditional wealth advisers to discuss how the industry can embrace innovation
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Strength through diversity is driving many of Latin America’s banks to grow regionally; the policy is working well for those becoming too dominant in their home market and for those following their large corporate clients into lucrative new markets. The growth of banking ‘multi-Latinas’ is set to continue, and it will be interesting to see which, and how quickly, of the local regional players can build scale to challenge the current duopoly of BBVA and Santander.
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Development beyond its US heartland has turned JPMorgan into a global player in wealth management.
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HSBC has cemented its position as central to financial systems across emerging markets.
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From laughing stock to global contender, the US firm has come a long way in a short time.
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Nordea has long been recognised for having the most broadly diversified franchise across the entire Nordic region (bar Iceland). As S&P comments in a recent update, Nordea’s 2013 results “confirmed the group’s sustainable, broad revenue base, supported by its large business model diversified by geography and business lines.”
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While flow business models are likely to remain challenged, it is clear that there is a new long-term challenger to the traditional flow monsters.
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Rapid improvements in financial regulatory structures, increased levels of international investment and oil and gas production in Angola have sparked a rapid expansion of the country’s banking sector.
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A strong advisory and origination business, coupled with a market leading trading status, make Citi the undisputed champion.
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Far from struggling in the new regulatory environment, a more diverse business keeps Goldman first among equals in M&A.
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Most banks are not comfortable with social media. CaixaBank is very different.
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An energized, collaborative and solutions-driven approach targeting truly global companies is proving a winning formula.
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Despite recent troubles, Deutsche was the outstanding performer in the debt capital markets over the last year.
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Last autumn, Danske Bank would have been an improbable candidate for best bank in Denmark. In September, new CEO Thomas Borgen replaced Eivind Kolding, who was shown the door after an unhappy tenure that had lasted only 19 months. One of Borgen’s first priorities was to inject a healthy dose of realism into Danske’s ambitions, cutting the bank’s ROE target for 2015 from 12% to 9%.
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A highly specialized cross-asset structuring team has placed Deutsche at the forefront of risk management solutions
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The Spanish bank is wired up to become the world’s leading digital bank thanks to the vision of its chief executive
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Last year’s launch of the Institute for Sustainable Investing tipped the scales in favour of this bank in a competitive field brimming with impressive work.
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The bank has beaten off increasing competition by arranging an impressive number and range of deals across emerging markets.
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Early signs of recovery in the eurozone brought relief to struggling economies across emerging Europe last year but the picture remained very mixed. Countries such as Turkey, Romania and Hungary had a substantial pick-up in growth, but the core central European markets of Poland and Czech Republic were slower to recover from their respective slowdowns. Meanwhile Croatia remained mired in recession, and Russia and Ukraine showed every sign of emulating it even, before the outbreak of the Crimean crisis.
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The firm has climbed the league tables since making securitization a priority and revamping its business as a global franchise.
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A more cohesive, flatter management structure has kept the venerable investment bank ahead of its challengers.
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The clear definition of a radical strategy distinguishes the Swiss bank from most of its peers. The successful execution of that strategy makes it Euromoney’s Bank of the Year.
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The rise of the European market means global players need to think beyond New York. Goldman Sachs leads the way.
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It might have a smaller team than its peers, but the firm insists it will stay the course in emerging markets – and it continues to punch its weight and more in equities.
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Substantial exposure to Russia and Ukraine combined with an unorthodox decision by the Austrian government in June to bail-in subordinated bondholders in nationalized bank Hypo Alpe Adria have not exactly helped bring stability back to the country’s banking sector. Indeed, the crisis in Ukraine and the government’s intervention have brought fresh turbulence to an already challenging year for Austrian banks. The bank however, that has shown greatest resilience, growth and development amid such a difficult domestic and regional environment for banking is UniCredit Bank Austria.
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Investment banker Ken Moelis launched his own firm in the teeth of the financial crisis. That he floated it seven years later is a remarkable achievement.
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Less than three years ago UBS was written off as one of the ultimate victims of the financial crisis. The bold decisions taken then by a new chief executive and his management team make it today a bank that others seek to emulate. Sergio Ermotti pinned UBS’s future to the core of its leading global wealth management business. Now the business is starting to look more than the sum of its parts.
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This year, Euromoney’s best bank in Africa is Nigerian player Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank). It stands out not only because of its stellar performance in its home country, but precisely because the bank represents a new standard of local expertise in Nigeria and is successfully delivering on its regional ambitions.
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Euromoney’s best bank in the US for 2014 is Wells Fargo. It serves one in five households in the US, as well as more small businesses than any other bank. It’s an enormous enterprise, with 6,200 branches across the country and $1.07 trillion in deposits, yet it continues to operate with the same feel and eye for detail as a community bank.
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After five years of balkanization of the European banking system, with many national champions abandoning international ambitions, selling out of positions that commanded little share in foreign markets to repatriate capital that domestic regulators have pressured them to conserve close to home, there are hardly any European banks left worthy of the name.
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The Argentine government is attempting to re-integrate its economy into the rest of the world. The recent debt repayment agreement with the Paris Club is the latest evidence of tentative reductions in political risk. The run-up to the 2015 presidential election looks set to be one of gradual growth, but the economy in which local banks are operating and the persistence of strict government regulations on lending rates to retail SME segments still present operational challenges.
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A battle-tested management team has held on through the turbulent years following Bank of America’s rescue of Merrill Lynch. Under Tom Montag, the firm quietly rebuilt an M&A capability that is thriving as that business roars back, supported by the bank’s strength in providing finance. As other banks shrink, BofA Merrill still harbours ambitions at home and abroad to be all things to most people.
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Clarity of focus gives Morgan Stanley the edge in helping clients to raise capital, its bankers say.
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Responding to data collection requirements demanded by regulators is one of the biggest challenges banks face. With its DSL platform, HSBC is taking a lead.
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Competitors might try to write Goldman Sachs off, yet it remains the bank that the biggest companies head to for advice.
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Another strong performance in a challenging operating environment earned Banka Kombetare Tregtare (BKT) the top spot in Albania again this year. Despite almost nonexistent growth in the wider economy, the country’s number two lender leveraged its dominant position in the retail market to expand its loan book by 3.7% and its deposit base by an impressive 14.4%, boosting its share of the overall deposit market by 1.8 percentage points to 21.9%. BKT was also one of very few Albanian lenders to see an improvement in its bottom line in 2013, with net profit up 27.1% to a sector-best $39.3 million. Return on equity was slightly below the bank’s long-term average, but remained healthy at 16.6% for the full year, and was back up to 17.5% in the first quarter of 2014.
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Strength and expertise across borders, industries and products are just some of the enduring hallmarks of a powerful franchise.
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WARNING – CONTAINS SPOILERS: It’s amazing how many senior bankers are addicted to the HBO series Game of Thrones. Or then again, perhaps it’s not.
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Summer is upon us and with it the lull of the Second Great Moderation. The First Great Moderation, in the half decade to 2008, was a disappointment, given that it ended with the worst market crisis since the crash of 1929 and a global recession.
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Credit Suisse estimates $104 billion exposure; exposed banks’ share prices sell off.
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Although terrorist attacks raged in Kenya at the beginning of the week, the country’s first Eurobond and the largest in the continent excluding South Africa was received well, highlighting sustained demand for emerging market debt.
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Banks are hurriedly developing mobile-banking platforms to keep pace with rising demand among consumers and clients to transact business via their smartphones, but some pure technology firms are stealing a march on them in mobile payments.
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Not everyone was blown away by the targeted LTRO and ABS measures announced by Mario Draghi to stimulate lending to Europe’s real economy.
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The Bahrain award is one of the easier ones in the region to decide upon; Ahli United is the leader on almost any metric. Its $579.4 million net profit for the 2013 financial year ($366.5 million after allowing for a one-off exceptional gain) was a record and a 25.7% improvement on the previous year, as well as being the biggest profit in the country’s banking industry. Total assets grew 9.3% to $32.65 billion; loans, 8.3%; customer deposits, 17.4%. NPLs are a healthy 2.4% and total provisions for those NPLs 149.4%, while the bank’s capital adequacy ratio now stands at 16.2%. Most of these metrics lead the industry.
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This is no longer a straightforward award to give. There are at least five homegrown houses that can make a good case to be the best in the region.