It was another stellar year for First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), under the continued leadership of group chief executive Hana Al Rostamani.

If there were two areas for any investment bank’s Middle East advisory team to specialise in and prove all-round excellence in last year, they were the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and outbound transactions. JPMorgan excelled on both counts.

Emirates NBD has successfully exported its small and medium-sized business banking operations from the UAE to its other core markets of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, creating a regional SME banking champion.

Emirates NBD Private Banking has a proven track record across wealth management in the Middle East. The Dubai-based firm scooped several wins at this year’s Euromoney private banking awards across global wealth management.

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.

If you visit the website of National Bank of Bahrain (NBB), it doesn’t take long to recognise that it takes corporate responsibility seriously.

As more banks in the Middle East invest in their digital transformations, the largest banks in the region are competing to develop new digital products and services.

In the face of increasing competition among regional and global banks, HSBC has again demonstrated its financing strength and expertise in the Middle East across the breadth of markets, sectors and geographies it is a leader in.

Last year was an important one for sustainable finance in the Middle East. Dubai hosted the COP28 conference, following on from Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt in 2022. This has well and truly put the spotlight on sustainable finance for banks, corporates and sovereigns in the region.

The provision of transaction services in the Middle East has become one of the most fiercely competitive parts of the market, largely concentrated around banks’ ability to support local and regional champions as well as blue-chip multinationals operating in the region.

In an interview with Euromoney, European Banking Authority chair José Manuel Campa joins the European Central Bank and others in pressuring banks to do more to prepare for geopolitical risks spreading from Russia to China, the US and Middle East.

Rumours that Chinese insurer Ping An could cut its stake in HSBC further, perhaps selling to a Middle East buyer at a time when Gulf investment is flooding into the People’s Republic, should not come as a surprise.

Banks and regulators are keen to use instant payments to reduce the influence of Visa and Mastercard on the European payments industry – but replacing these two dominant players will be far from easy.

Although the relative health of some nationalized banks may facilitate their privatization, major obstacles to any sales remain.

Naz Vahid is to leave Citi after nearly four decades as one of the US bank’s most effective and innovative wealth managers.

It is all about staging when performance is in question.

Thailand is enduring a record heatwave, yet its economy is in the deep freeze. Prime minister Srettha Thavisin is frantically jetting around the world trying to woo global corporates and investors, so far to little avail.

Some takeovers take time.

New accounts targeted at low-income customers reflects the reality of intense competition in the sector.

UK banks, asset managers and individuals see better returns from dumping UK stocks and investing elsewhere, but the impact eventually becomes ruinous.

BBVA’s bid for Banco Sabadell didn’t appear to be going well when its share price slumped after the announcement. Then Sabadell rejected the offer despite the substantial premium to its own share price.

Twenty-five years ago in Spain, ING launched a branchless bank – still its biggest greenfield retail operation. Euromoney asks Iberia chief executive Ignacio Juliá Vilar what still makes it stand out from both incumbents and newer arrivals.

UOB’s acquisition of Citi’s consumer assets in four southeast Asia markets strengthens its status in one of the world’s fastest growing regions. The Singapore lender’s CEO Wee Ee Cheong talks to Euromoney about why this matters and what comes next.

Aditya Birla Finance Limited-Wealth wins this award for the quality and range of its investment research.

Several Chinese bubble-tea makers are looking at Hong Kong IPOs. When high-end tea maker Nayuki listed three years ago investors drank it up, but the deal now trades 90% below its listing price. Can a new group of issuers revive the market?

As mandated real-time payments loom, Europe’s banks and other payment providers must look at modernising legacy infrastructure.

Corporates’ longstanding complaint on banks’ payments offerings is that they don’t know what they are being charged for but suspect it is too much. Airwallex now provides an alternative at global scale.

BBVA could have bought Banco Sabadell much more cheaply in 2020. Sabadell’s CEO César González-Bueno has since turned his bank around. But BBVA’s return to the negotiating table comes at a time when European banking may be moving to a new and more confident phase.

Exactly one year ago, San Francisco-based First Republic Bank was sold by regulators amid a US regional banking crisis. Citizens Financial Group, which had seen the sale as a chance to turbocharge its private banking ambitions, lost out to JPMorgan. But far from being the end of the story, that failed bid was just the beginning. Within weeks the bank had announced First Republic’s Susan deTray as the head of its new private bank, a unit that is now at the heart of a fast-growing wealth franchise.

Restructuring HSBC, like painting the Forth bridge, is a never-ending job. While Noel Quinn has done well, the board must not make another ham-fisted transition.