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LATEST ARTICLES
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Political instability in France, coupled with better EU-UK relations, could threaten Paris’ ability to rival London as a financial centre. But a focus on institutional clients among French and other EU banks is already helping London’s resilience – a trend that shows little sign of abating.
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Citi saw impressive growth over 2023 with revenue growth of 16% year on year.
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OCBC wins the award as Singapore's best digital bank this year for enhancing its digital banking service through a series of initiatives designed to deepen engagement and improve the user experience across its platforms.
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For its range of initiatives and substantial investment in supporting social and environmental issues in the special administrative region, Bank of China (Hong Kong) wins the award this year.
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Citi secures the award for Korea’s best investment bank in recognition of its comprehensive range of activity across M&A advisory, debt capital markets and equity capital markets.
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In 2023, Citi saw operating revenues reach around ¥139 billion ($860 million) and total assets climb to ¥6,097 billion.
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Citi saw impressive growth across its corporate banking services in Hong Kong in 2023. It saw year-on-year growth in its loan portfolio and funded several significant environmental, social and governance (ESG) financing transactions.
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Newly onboarded corporate customers at HSBC grew by 21% last year. It introduced Smartserve, which reduces the number of days required to open an account, and Omni Collect, which simplifies the way businesses collect payments.
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In 2023, HSBC saw its market share of foreign investment into Malaysia reach 30% of total assets under management, making it the leading custodian and clearing bank for foreign institutional investors investing in country’s capital markets. HSBCnet Get Rate, which provides its Malaysian customers with automatic preferential FX rates, was upgraded to allow 24/7 FX booking for companies with EU and US headquarters.
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HSBC grew profit before tax by 188% in 2023 to SLR38.2 billion ($126 million).
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HSBC had a good year in India in 2023, with profits up by 19% to $1.51 billion, from $1.27 billion the previous year.
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HSBC achieved robust growth in 2023 with net profit growing 26% to total $566 million, with growth coming from its commercial, wealth and personal banking businesses.
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Throughout 2023, HSBC expanded its presence in the mainland Chinese market, strengthening its operations and advancing strategic initiatives across many sectors.
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HSBC introduced initiatives to tackle parental leave, diversity in its hiring process and to improve support for its transgender employees in Hong Kong last year.
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In 2023, HSBC further solidified its position as Hong Kong’s best bank under the leadership of Luanne Lim, HSBC Hong Kong’s chief executive. HSBC Group’s market profit before tax soared to $10.7 billion, representing 80% year-on-year growth and contributing 35.3% to the group’s overall pre-tax profit.
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HSBC helped Singaporean companies like Next Gen Foods and Multiplier Technologies expand overseas in 2023. It also scaled up its support for local businesses expansion in the region by introducing a $1 billion ASEAN (Association of southeast Asian Nations) growth fund for digital platform businesses and a $150 million venture debt offering aimed at scaling high growth companies.
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OCBC had a busy 2023, launching new FX features, application programming interface (API) integration and improvements to its online platform.
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OCBC NISP proved an invaluable partner to its small and medium-sized enterprise clients in Indonesia throughout 2023 with the launch of its Nyala Bisnis 2.0 platform and initiatives to empower women-owned SMEs.
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For a small economy, Luxembourg boasts many banks: 120 were authorized in 2023. Many of these primarily serve international clients, in particular providing securities services to institutional investors from across Europe and beyond.
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Standard Bank successfully implemented innovative digital products across all banking segments in 2023 while also making important philanthropic contributions in Malawi.
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All banks invest heavily in their digital products and services, but the return on that investment can vary widely.
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Romania was the place of perhaps the most important bank M&A deal to be announced in 2023: the merger of the local units of Italian group UniCredit and Greece’s Alpha Bank. The deal promised to allow UniCredit, as the owner of 90% of the merged entity, to supplant Societe Generale-owned BRD as the country’s third-biggest bank.
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It is not normally thought of as one of the banks with a large stronghold on central and eastern Europe. Nevertheless, BNP Paribas still owns relatively large banks in what are, in effect after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the region’s two biggest markets in terms of banking: Poland and Turkey.
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In 2023, Korean banks faced a perfect storm, grappling with regulatory pressure to lower interest margins while facing intense profitability hurdles. In addition, the country’s largest banks found themselves embroiled in a scandal around the mis-selling of equity-linked securities that had resulted in substantial losses for consumers.
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Welcome to the optimistic part of the cycle for Argentina: international investment banks re-rate the outlook for the small cohort of large, listed banks and those banks start to look to consolidate. The last cycle saw equity issuance, but the banks had barely topped up the funds in their M&A war chests before the optimism faded away alongside their newly positive book values.
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The bank says it is succeeding with Open Account Automation, the first module of a long-term initiative to digitize trade finance through new platform CashPro Supply Chain Solutions.
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Life for small and medium-sized enterprises is rarely comfortable. Even when your business is faring well, the capricious nature of policymakers and markets can upend carefully laid plans.
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Standard Chartered wins the award this year for making several key enhancements to its digital banking platform, supporting strong growth in customer sales and engagement.
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Often this award goes to the bank that has done a particularly good job of providing useful digital features through a smartphone app to retail customers. This year we recognize a wholesale bank, most renowned for the technology behind its CashPro offering for payments, receivables, liquidity and FX management. Bank of America is western Europe’s best digital bank.
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Scotiabank has demonstrated remarkable consistency amid a very volatile economic period, reflecting the management team’s focus on initiatives to improve the productivity and efficiency of the bank.
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The bank is leveraging all its resources to reach six million individuals by 2025. It is well on its way.
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A regional SME champion shows how to operate on the world stage.
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To be the best investment bank in the fastest growing continent you can’t just be here or there, you must be everywhere.
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Scotiabank has long championed a variety of environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities in its business and considers walking the talk to be crucial in its home region. For its continued commitment to doing things right, Scotiabank is North America’s best bank for corporate responsibility.
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Goldman is transforming its provision of research and insights to make it much easier for investors to form trade ideas.
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Bank SinoPac has long focused on initiatives to promote responsible and inclusive finance, primarily by channelling loans to small businesses. The total outstanding of such lending to small and medium-sized enterprises was NT$325 billion ($10 billion) at the end of 2023.
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When Scotiabank’s long-serving chief executive Brian Porter stepped down at the end of January 2023, after 10 years at the helm and more than 40 years at the bank, he left an institution that was in better shape than he found it, but one that still had much to do.
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Andrea Orcel’s long-awaited debut as a bank chief executive has won over the markets, largely thanks to capital returns. But his plans for UniCredit go far beyond balance-sheet management and costs. He now sees a chance to demonstrate growth.
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Most banks focus their corporate responsibility agendas on environmental, social and governance metrics and the drive to net zero, as well as on diversity and inclusion in terms of their customers and their own workforces. Banco Santander, western Europe’s best bank for corporate responsibility, has for many years looked beyond these core aspects of responsibility and found other ways to contribute to society.
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BNP Paribas Wealth Management operates across 17 countries, serving a client base of entrepreneurs, family offices and high net-worth individuals.
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The ability to work seamlessly across markets and asset classes paid off for the US firm in a challenging year.
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It was a mixed year in Austrian banking in 2023. Higher eurozone interest rates bolstered banks’ net interest margins, but at the end of the year the bankruptcy of Austrian real estate group Signa shone the spotlight on what Moody’s said was €2.2 billion of lending by Austrian banks to Signa.
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Yet again, DBS stands head and shoulders above the field in Asian wealth management.
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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.
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The bank is willing to spend its considerable technology budget on both exciting new ideas and on existing services that improve the lives of its customers.
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It is hardly surprising that an Italian bank should excel at lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the backbone of the industrial strategy of the country. SMEs are at the heart of UniCredit’s UniCredit per l’Italia strategy, which has seen a further €10 billion of support extended to individuals and corporates this year – including a special assistance package for Emilia Romagna in May in response to widespread flooding.
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Equity Bank Kenya claims its mission is to empower clients and stakeholders, both socially and economically.
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By far the biggest bank by assets in the country and boasting nine million account holders, ING is also the best bank in the Netherlands this year.
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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.
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Dominican Republic president Luis Abinader’s election win was good news for state-controlled bank Banreservas because it ensures stability in senior management, led by the bank’s president Samuel Pereyra, at a time when it is on something of a roll.
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There are many reasons why Citi wins this year’s award for Asia’s best digital bank. Above all, the bank has no peer when it comes to investing year after year in cutting-edge digital solutions that benefit all of its clients.
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Millennium bim, Euromoney’s best bank in Mozambique this year, has focused its efforts on technological improvements during the period under review.
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Led by its head of wealth and investment Jacques Els, Standard Bank Wealth & Investment is a private-banking powerhouse in Africa.
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The 100th anniversary of Isbank, Turkey’s biggest private-sector lender, has come after some challenging years for the country's economy and financial sector.
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As the equity capital markets remained sluggish across Europe last year, financing activity was all about debt. So, it is perhaps no surprise that western Europe’s best bank for financing this year is the one that dominated the debt capital markets league tables working on 509 deals worth $128 billion equivalent for a 7% market share: BNP Paribas. Even in ECM, the French firm ranked number five behind sector leaders BofA Securities and Goldman Sachs.
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HSBC wins the award for western Europe’s best bank for transaction services thanks to the delivery of an impressive range of services to corporate treasurers that the bank has developed over years of heavy investment.
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If there was ever a time that demonstrated JPMorgan’s credentials as the country’s best bank, it was the crisis in March and April 2023 when US regional banks suddenly faced a balance sheet reckoning triggered by the rapid change in interest rates.
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Equity Bank continued to grow its total assets in 2023, surpassing the KSh1 trillion ($7.7 billion) mark at the end of the year. The bank maintained a third of its consumer loans to salaried civil servants, teachers and private-sector employees at 13% interest, despite the central bank hiking rates much higher.
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Zambia National Commercial Bank (Zanaco) is again Euromoney’s best bank in Zambia. Profit before tax increased 44% year on year to KK1.74 billion ($65 million), including a 109% boost in the third quarter driven by income earned on government securities, trading and an uptick in net fees and commission.
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In a year (very) short on equity capital markets activity, it was in the debt and the loan market that Standard Bank shone brightest in 2023.
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MUFG, Japan’s largest bank, had an excellent financial year in the 12 months to March 2024, setting new records for the group.
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Presenting annual earnings in early February 2024, Frank Vang-Jensen had good reason to be delighted with the 2023 performance of the bank he leads as chief executive. After another year in which Nordea strengthened its profile in all four of its main markets, including performing strongly in its home country, the bank again wins the award for Finland’s best bank.
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The French bank has made steady progress in this business over the last decade and last year was a strong period of new mandates and client expansion.
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With economic growth softening in Trinidad and Tobago – this year GDP is expected to come in at 2.2% compared to 2.5% in 2023 – Scotiabank continues to outperform other banks in the local market. Led by country manager Gayle Pazos, Scotiabank’s focus on digital transformation saw improvements in its platform relating to accessibility upgrades and security enhancements. The significant investment from the bank in this area over the past three years is helping to deliver efficiency and, in turn, stronger financial results.
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Nicaragua’s economy suffered a rapid deceleration from the 10% growth rate it experienced in the immediate post-pandemic reopening. Political and economic volatility impacted the financial system and there was distinct evidence of a risk-off attitude to loan growth from most of the country’s main banks.
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It has been a great time to be a Greek banker. Rating agencies returned the sovereign to investment grade in 2023 and the country’s lenders, having reduced non-performing loans and cost of risk while rebuilding capital ratios, also delivered improved profits.
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Crédit Agricole CIB demonstrated its global capabilities and expertise in sustainability for Hong Kong clients last year, structuring and executing several transactional firsts as well as supporting the growth and development of the broader market.
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The bank’s chief executive has led from the front to create an institution that is more diverse and better reflects the society in which it works.
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For HSBC, 2023 was an important year at its UK ring-fenced bank. This delivered its strongest set of results since it was created in 2018, with revenue coming in 36% higher than in 2022. That was in part thanks to higher rates and fat net interest margins, but also to key strategic decisions, such as to make growing market share in mortgages a priority.
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New Zealand’s high interest rate cycle has significantly impacted borrowing demand and funding costs, marking the end of an era of record profits for banks. Despite these challenges, ASB Bank, owned by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, has demonstrated resilience during the awards period and is New Zealand’s best bank.
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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.
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Nerves were jangling hard in Europe last year, when the panic that had seen many tens of billions of dollars’ worth of deposits flee large US regional banks in a matter of hours suddenly began emerging in Europe.
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Under group chief executive Andrea Orcel, UniCredit has reaffirmed its commitment to central and eastern Europe – highlighted by its announcement of the €300 million purchase of Alpha Bank Romania, part of a deal that also involved it taking a stake in the Athens-based group.
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A strong financial performance together with a series of new initiatives, including in environmental, social and governance, make Standard Bank Euromoney’s best bank in South Africa this year.
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Since its foundation in 1885 as a cooperative and mutual bank, social usefulness has been central to Crédit Agricole’s business model. It was an early pioneer of sustainable finance. It was one of the first banks to commit to exiting the thermal coal industry by 2030 in OECD countries and by 2040 for the rest of the world.
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With volumes in the capital markets subdued in 2023, there was increased client interest in private markets and M&A transactions. BofA Securities – led by Augusto Urmeneta, president of Bank of America for Latin America and head of Latin America global corporate and investment banking – embraced this challenge and helped clients tap alternative sources of liquidity. M&A was an important strategic option for many companies and BofA’s deal list featured 26 clients in five countries with both cross-border and domestic transactions, which accounted for a 9.5% market share in terms of fee revenues ($52.2 million).
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Some analysts were quick to call it the deal of the century. The first takeover of a global systemically important bank that repeated management errors and regulatory failure had brought to the brink of collapse was a rescue by its domestic rival. It was a humiliation for Switzerland that, with customers pulling their money in vast quantities over several months, Credit Suisse was left to carry on to the very brink of insolvency.
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BNP Paribas has enviable sustainable finance credentials globally, but Latin America has become a particular area of strength for the French bank. In 2023, it led on some truly landmark transactions for clients throughout the region and can claim to be leading the evolution of sustainable finance in Latin America.
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For its mix of sustainable finance structuring expertise and innovation in retail banking, ING wins the award this year.
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Paraguay continues to prove that a raft of business-friendly economic policies can pay off in Latin America, with the small landlocked country enjoying GDP growth of 4.5%. Part of that bump was due to the recovery from the previous year’s drought, but economists are confident of another year of growth above 3% in 2024.
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Under the leadership of president Khairussaleh Ramli, Maybank has exceeded the broader industry performance and achieved several milestones this year, for which it receives the award for Malaysia’s best bank. With total assets exceeding RM1 trillion ($212 billion) and a remarkable 17.5% rise in net profit to RM9.35 billion in 2023, the bank has grown while delivering record dividend payouts. Profit before tax was up 5.6% and return on equity rose to 10.8% from 9.6% in the previous year.
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Prime minister Donald Tusk’s defeat of the former ruling party PiS in elections last October brought hope for a less strained relationship between Poland and the EU. It also brought hope for more favourable policies towards banks, after the PiS government’s mortgage holidays and bank taxes.
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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.
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In a year marked by historic lending growth in China, state-owned banks have taken the lead, defying the traditional dominance of smaller banks in driving loan expansion. Among these state-owned giants, Bank of China (BoC) has emerged as a standout performer, securing its position as China’s best bank this year.
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Banks in Ghana have faced a difficult couple of years thanks to the government of Ghana’s debt default and domestic debt exchange programme announced in November 2022.
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HSBC is a powerhouse in sustainable finance in Asia: a multiple winner of this award and for good reason.
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The economies of central America have been growing rapidly since the end of the pandemic. Some of this is the natural rebound of economic activity among countries that have outsized tourist sectors; and increased spending in this sector is one of the leading themes of the past couple of years.
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Market doubts, three years ago, about whether Andrea Orcel’s management of UniCredit would be sufficiently orientated to shareholder value have proven to be far from the mark. Orcel might have shied away from a deal with the Italian government to buy Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena in 2021, but this has not prevented UniCredit from remaining a large and growing part of the European banking story.
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Societe Generale’s global reputation as a driver of green and sustainable principles and investment, plus its long presence across Africa, combine to make the Paris-based lender a clear winner of this award on the continent.
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In 2023, HSBC further solidified its position as Hong Kong’s best bank. Under the leadership of Luanne Lim, HSBC Hong Kong’s chief executive, the bank’s profit before tax soared to $10.7 billion, representing 80% year-on-year growth and contributing 35.3% to the group’s overall pre-tax profit.
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It is not enough to have the data, banks also need to bring intelligence and financial analysis to bear in sustainable finance to keep progressing.
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Despite a local economic slowdown, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s banking sector remained healthy in 2023 for growth, profits and asset quality. It is a market that UniCredit Bank Mostar and Raiffeisen Bank dominate in terms of market share, and this year UniCredit – led locally by chief executive Amina Mahmutović – retains the award for the country’s best bank.
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Brazil’s Nubank is the momentum story in global banking. In 2023, the bank added 19 million clients (to a total of 93.9 million), and it now can claim to bank 53% of the adult population of Brazil. It is also now seeing a positive operating leverage effect from the growth in its client base. In the fourth quarter of 2023, it recorded revenue of $2.4 billion (Nubank is listed on the NYSE and all its earnings are reported in dollars), which was up 57% on an annual basis. Net income jumped 489% to $360.9 million, with a return on equity of 23%.
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‘Being there’ is one of Citi’s many skills. It is always there for clients: underwriting stock offerings, printing bonds and taking the lead on bridge loans to support complex acquisitions.
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The bank has cleaned up its books, closed branches and improved its cost-to-income ratio. It also paid its first dividend since 2008.
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The bank's ability to offer a full set of services almost everywhere around the globe sets it apart from the competition.
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HSBC was the standout candidate in this award this year, dominating transaction banking in Asia.
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Getting M&A right in Africa is not easy – big-ticket transactions are rare, and deal flow tends to come in fits and starts – but Standard Bank has got it down to a fine art.
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UOB retains the title of Singapore’s best bank, bolstered by resilient financial performance and a strengthened network across southeast Asia. Under the leadership of chief executive Wee Ee Cheong, the bank devised a three-year plan in 2023 to become the foremost bank in southeast Asia, and it is well on its way to delivering on that aim.
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Barclays wins the award as the UK’s best investment bank. Even though some investors had to wait for the bank’s investor day in February 2024 to hear it once again reaffirm its commitment to the investment bank, staff in the UK had no doubt of this.
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Barclays has integrated sustainability across its operations and financing activities, significantly reducing emissions and enhancing its commitment to green investment.
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Some capital markets franchises make their name for sheer volume, topping the deal rankings by simply being everywhere. Others take a different tack, picking spots where they know they excel and then doing so. For yet again being on some of the most challenging and intellectually demanding deals in the review period, Morgan Stanley is North America’s best bank for financing.
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Peruvian banks had a difficult time in 2023, with zero GDP growth and a material contraction in domestic demand. However, inflation did begin to subside during the second half of the year, which led the central bank to reduce the reference interest rate for Peruvian soles by 100 basis points, ending the year at 6.25%. This reduction had a mixed impact for banks, lowering the average net interest margin but improving the country’s economic outlook.
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Commerzbank has seen a remarkable bounce back in its profitability and share price over the past four years, something that was particularly apparent in 2023. The year began with its re-inclusion in the DAX in February, five years after it was ejected from the index of German blue-chip stocks. This was thanks to a dramatic recovery in its share price from the depths it hit during the early Covid-19 period.
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The bank has become a global payments powerhouse, delivering innovation and outperformance.
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Societe Generale Côte d’Ivoire is again named the best bank in the country after a year in which profit before tax was up 32% at CFEFr120 billion ($42 million) from CFEFr91 billion in 2022. The bank has shown strong commitment to the Ivory Coast despite exiting other African markets such as the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania and Chad. Indeed, Societe Generale deputy CEO of the group Pierre Palmieri visited Abidjan last year to reinforce this.
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There are many ways in which banks can demonstrate their commitment to social responsibility and some come amid the most challenging times. The devastating earthquake in southern Turkey at the beginning of last year triggered an immediate response in support for the affected communities from the country’s corporate and banking sectors.
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Once again, Morgan Stanley is Asia’s best bank for advisory. The investment bank was the undisputed leader in region-wide advisory during the awards period, notching $172 billion in completed and $117 billion in announced transactions.
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Citi stands head and shoulders above its rivals in this category. The products it generates are designed to help day-to-day business for all its clients, be they global corporates working in and across Africa, or African firms scaling up their regional and international presence.
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Banco Angolano de Investimentos (BAI) posted impressive financial results for 2023. Profit before tax stood at AKz220 billion ($250 million), almost double its 2022 result (AKz115 billion), and the bank achieved a return on equity of 36%, up from 26% the year before.
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Banco Santander CIB’s steady progress in Brazil – by far Latin America’s biggest market for financing – coincided with a greater emphasis on local markets financing in 2023. The bank’s sweet spot, straddling local and international debt capital markets, as well as loan financing, meant that it had a very strong year across various debt segments. According to Dealogic, Santander CIB – which is led in the region by Rafael Noya, global head of global debt financing – was the leading underwriter of domestic DCM throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, helped by a second place in Brazil, where it took a 9% share of local issuance. Santander’s local strength was also supported by a strong showing in international DCM.
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Banreservas’ president Samuel Pereyra would argue that as a state-owned bank, all of its activities are led by a sense of corporate responsibility. Its loan portfolios are directed towards providing credit to industries targeted as crucial for the Dominican economy’s growth and its recent international expansion has been developed to facilitate financing flows between the country and its large international diaspora.
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The definition of excellence in these Euromoney awards is multifaceted. Sometimes the best bank is the one that has innovated and changed the market, sometimes the momentum in the market deserves recognition and at other times the player that dominates in terms of scale and profitability is the winner. It’s not often all three, but in Brazil, Nubank has revolutionized the retail banking market while enjoying unprecedented growth that has begun to feed – thanks to its highly efficient operating model – into operational leverage that is driving market-leading profitability.
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Raiffeisen Bank Kosovo is the country’s best bank after a year in which it introduced of a series of new and enhanced products across its banking businesses, materially grew its client base and generated a record net profit.
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For the volume of sustainable finance being provided to the Turkish economy, as well as innovation in sustainability products, Akbank wins the award as best bank for environmental, social and governance this year.
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Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has solidified its standing as Australia’s best bank, driven not only by robust financial performance but also by its disciplined approach to margin management. Under the stewardship of chief executive Matt Comyn, the bank has strategically opted not to compete for less profitable mortgage customers to focus on delivering sustainable returns.
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Banco Santander’s wealth management proposition has been resonating in Latin America in recent years. It has been one of the big engines of growth for Santander’s wealth management and insurance division in 2023, which contributed €3.3 billion in profit to the group, up 21% year on year. The bank’s strong regional footprint – as well as its presence in the US and Europe – gives it a perfect competitive proposition for wealthy Latin Americans, who are increasingly interested in diversifying their portfolio into international assets and currencies.
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After depositors fled the wreckage of the US regional banks in 2023 and customers started jumping overboard from a sinking Credit Suisse, even more banks could have been dragged into a systemic crisis. But UBS, rebuilt after the global financial crisis as a strong, sustainable and well-managed institution, responded to the rescue call from a fellow G-Sib. It rescued Switzerland as a financial centre, stopped the panic from spreading and struck a good deal for its own shareholders. Credit Suisse was not a gift. The integration will be tough. But UBS has got off to a good start and could soon relaunch its own growth story.
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For many banks, sustainable finance is about more than just finance, it is about the quality of advice they provide and what they themselves are doing to be more sustainable.
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North America’s Best Digital Bank: Bank of America
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Singapore’s big lenders tend to dominate banking for small and medium-sized enterprises in Asia, and this year is no exception, with UOB beating its domestic rivals to this award.
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As balance sheet pressures have intensified, Morgan Stanley has been at the forefront of a changing financial sector landscape.
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Until recently investment banking in central America and the Caribbean was about having the best debt offering. The few international debt capital market mandates were obviously crucial to gain this credibility, but a presence in dollar and local-currency loans was also critical. Today it’s more complicated. The equity capital market still doesn’t really feature, but sustainable finance is crucial to the region. Moreover, the growing cross-border presence of many companies active in these countries means that transaction and treasury services are now areas of true competitive differentiation.
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Scotiabank is delivering on the promise of its 2018 acquisition of BBVA’s bank in Chile by consolidating its position as the third-largest private sector bank and is now closing in on second place. The bank closed 2023 with a 14% market share and, according to Fitch Ratings, the best risk rating in the industry. In Chile, Scotiabank enjoyed the highest income growth in the financial system. A combination of fierce cost control and increased digital penetration enabled the bank to generate a 41% efficiency ratio and significant savings. The other side of the balance sheet was also strong: revenues grew 10%. The bank’s operating income grew 9% and its return on equity rose to 12.3%.
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For the second year in a row, HSBC walks away with the award for Asia’s best bank – and deservedly so. Outgoing chief executive Noel Quinn’s decisive move in early 2020 to pivot to Asia by redeploying $100 billion in risk-weighted assets has delivered, generating strong new income streams and squeezing more gains from key product lines such as wealth management and transaction banking.
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Kasikornbank (KBank) receives the award for Thailand’s best bank in in recognition of its commitment to enhancing asset quality in a challenging market and its dedication to sustainability initiatives.
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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.
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The bank’s 10-year ScotiaRise programme has gone from strength to strength, reaching out to indigenous communities and aligning with its truth and reconciliation committee’s work.
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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.
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The M&A advisory rankings for 2023 tell a familiar story in western Europe. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs rank top both by revenue and by deal value. But Rothschild & Co advised on almost twice as many transactions as either of the bulge bracket pair and it maintained its third place in the revenue league table ahead even of Morgan Stanley.
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There is a new force in small and medium-sized enterprise banking in Latin America and that is BTG Pactual. The bank is renowned for forensically analyzing new segments before entering and then aggressively pursuing what it has identified as specific opportunities and market innovations.
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As in so many other areas of the bank’s franchise, JPMorgan’s wealth management performance in 2023 was a good illustration of the unique qualities of the US’s preeminent banking institution. It is North America’s best bank for wealth management.
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The awards period marked a triumphant return to performance for Allied Irish Banks (AIB), Ireland’s best bank. Putting behind it its involvement in the years-long industry-wide tracker mortgage scandal in Ireland, for which it was fined €100 million in 2022, the bank posted a very strong recovery in 2023, with record profits that nearly tripled versus the previous year. Revenues rose 62%, driven by net interest income that was up more than 80%.
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French banks have not had the net interest margin bonanza that higher interest rates have offered many southern European banks recently. In fact, some French banks saw profit decreases in their domestic retail divisions last year, while areas like markets and vehicle leasing have been less of a support to group profit compared to the immediate post-pandemic period.
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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.
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Focusing on its core strengths has helped Deutsche Bank serve corporate clients amid intense geopolitical, technological and environmental challenges.
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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.
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BDO Unibank, the Philippines’ largest bank, turned in an exceptional financial performance in 2023, cementing its position as the country’s best bank.
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Goldman Sachs has been the preeminent mergers and acquisitions advisory firm for almost as long as the business has existed in its modern form. Its performance in the difficult environment of 2023 showed how resilient its franchise is, and it once again wins the award for North America’s best bank for advisory.
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Societe Generale has accelerated its transition and is using important mandates to convince its internal and external audiences alike.
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Public-sector clients had to tackle rising rates and geopolitical uncertainty in 2023, while undergoing fundamental restructuring in their sector. HSBC was instrumental in guiding them through the uncertainty.
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Nothing shows BBVA’s ability to harness what was once viewed as a disparate set of national banks around Latin America into a cohesive, integrated banking institution better than the success of its transaction services business.
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CTBC Bank has cemented its position in Taiwan’s best bank over the past year. Driven by its dual track digital innovation and environmental, social and governance (ESG) based transformation, the bank achieved a record net profit of NT$41.3 billion ($1.3 billion) in 2023, with a cost-to-income ratio of 55.16% and a return on equity of 11.9%, the highest among its peers. Revenue and pre-tax profit grew by 16% and 12%, respectively.
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While one of the smaller banking markets in Latin America, Uruguay has some excellent banks that generate some exceptionally strong financial results. Part of that success is due to a consistently strong economic backdrop – and in 2023 significantly higher interest rates also helped. However, individual management teams can also take a large part of the credit and this year Banco Santander’s chief executive Gustavo Trelles repeats his success of last year by retaining the award for Uruguay’s best bank.
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Nearly all banks today make claims to be helping to save the planet in one way or another. One that has consistently done more than most when it comes to shifting the balance within the financial services industry is Bank of America, and it wins the award for North America’s best bank for sustainable finance.
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Few banks have navigated turbulent times so well, posting record revenues on the back of strong net inflows and rising markets.
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Even its rivals in Spain admit to feeling the impact last year as CaixaBank moved on from integrating Bankia to concentrating more exclusively on developing its business organically. This is evident, for example, in the savings market, where its customer funds increased by 3.1% in 2023. In insurance, a vital part of the group’s activities, there was also healthy growth, with a 7% volume growth in general and life risk premiums.
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Nedbank wins the best digital bank in Africa award for the second year in a row, courtesy of its push to reform and re-engineer its IT system, with the aim of cutting costs, attracting new business and favouring an approach that focuses on evolution rather than revolution.
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BBVA achieved impressive momentum in Latin America during 2023, winning individual best bank awards in Colombia and Mexico, and coming close in Peru. Its bank in Argentina also posted respectable growth and is poised to take advantage of a potentially more benign economic outlook. The Spanish firm also capitalized on its market leading position in Mexico to win the award for the country’s best investment bank and is also Latin America’s best bank for transaction services – a landmark win in an sector that has traditionally been dominated by US banks.
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Bank Mandiri, Indonesia’s largest bank by assets, achieved a record net profit of $3.6 billion in 2023, an impressive 34% year on year rise – the highest in the industry and significantly outpacing the other four tier-one banks. Led by president director Darmawan Junaidi, it retains the award for Indonesia’s best bank.
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Transaction services are a vital part of UniCredit’s rationale as a pan-European bank, and its leadership in this area is particularly evident in central and eastern Europe, where the bank’s regional head of transactions and payments is Riccardo Madinelli.
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The winds of change are coming to the Mexican banking system. Nubank’s arrival and its 15% interest-paying deposit account are certain to bring new competitive challenges to the established banks. As the biggest and best bank in the country, BBVA theoretically has the most to lose, but its continued excellence across banking segments means that it is the best prepared for any disruption to come.
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The bank has made steady but still impressive improvement in its markets business over the last few years. And it was the firm among the 12 biggest to increase revenues in 2023.
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Even its rivals in Spain admit to feeling the impact last year as CaixaBank moved on from integrating Bankia to concentrating more exclusively on developing its business organically. This is evident, for example, in the savings market, where its customer funds increased by 3.1% in 2023. In insurance, a vital part of the group’s activities, there was also healthy growth, with a 7% volume growth in general and life risk premiums.
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Overall 2023 was a challenging year for Colombia’s economy and most of its large banks would have felt reasonably happy with their static performance. But BBVA managed to outperform the market in most banking segments. The firm ended last year as the leading foreign bank in the country and the fourth largest in the financial sector, with an 11.2% market share in terms of assets. However, it was the growth in the difficult conditions that sealed the award for Colombia’s best bank. BBVA grew total loans by 6.4% in the year and increased its market share by 50 basis points to 11.6%, led by an 8.5% increase in loans to individuals, which took market share of that segment to 14.9%, a 106bp rise.
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The strategic case for banks to remain in central and eastern Europe remains intact: that is the official line from Scope Ratings at least. The agency found that faster growth and higher interest rates in CEE have, overall, boosted the profitability of western European banks present in the region.
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With a chief executive pushing sustainable finance from the very top, HSBC is leading from the front in the global banking industry’s response to the climate emergency.
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For the second year in a row, Standard Bank walks away with the award for the best bank in Africa. And for good reason.
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In tough markets, changes in banks’ market share can be particularly telling. Mergers and acquisitions had another down year in 2023, with total volume falling to $3.13 trillion, from $4.3 trillion in 2022, when rates first started rising, and $5.7 trillion in the post-Covid boom of 2021.
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Transaction banking clients faced many challenges in 2023, mostly as a result of the rapidly shifting interest rate environment. That made it vital to have a banking partner that could supply reliable advice on liquidity management.
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Banking small and medium-sized companies across central and eastern Europe has become intensely competitive for the regional banks. Even amid the anaemic economic growth of last year, competition to grow the SME client base remained high as banks sought to expand their market share and boost assets.
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Tourism is central to the economy of the Bahamas and the country continued to recover from the pandemic-enforced lockdowns with strong GDP growth of more than 4% in 2023. Scotiabank’s business in the country similarly continues to improve from the Covid years and, in 2023, the bank achieved its highest profitability for 15 years with net income of $70.3 million, up by almost 46% year on year. The bank’s management attributes this to a range of initiatives executed in previous years, such as the branch network optimization strategy and revenue enhancement strategies to progressively lower operating costs and boost revenues.
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The Belgian government’s retail bond programme last year, which pressured lenders to raise deposits, was just one element of a relatively tough environment for banks in Belgium. The country also sits at the opposite end of the spectrum to southern Europe in terms of the proportion of loans on floating-rate deals, meaning local banks benefit less from higher eurozone interest rates.
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Raiffeisen Bank is Albania’s best bank this year in recognition of its retail, corporate and treasury banking services, and its strong financial performance during the year. This was demonstrated across product and service enhancements in its main three banking businesses.
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S&P’s regional bank index has just pushed past its March 10, 2023, level, reflecting where these stocks were immediately before the collapse of SVB last year. Those stocks are rising sharply and investors are seeing huge profits, so is this a sign that regional banks have finally emerged from their crisis?
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HSBC’s choice of a new CEO to replace Noel Quinn was long flagged. Elhedery’s fortune is to be handed the reins of power in an extended period of calm for the UK lender, which benefited immensely from Quinn’s calm stoicism. But deteriorating Sino-US relations mean that turbulence for the London- and Hong Kong-listed lender is sure to return.
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The bank is targeting the often-overlooked service sector with structured solutions, along with identifying embedded finance as a fast-growing segment. With the launch of Global Trade Solutions, it goes beyond traditional product offerings and financing.
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The Singapore state-owned fund has unveiled plans to invest $10 billion in India and to plough more capital into the US and Japan. At the same time, it is quietly retreating from China, once its largest investment market, but now beset by underperforming capital markets, weak growth and bleak consumption data.
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Tyler Dickson’s departure from Citi must rank as one of the most predictable moves in investment banking this year, even if where he has ended up is perhaps less obvious. Elsewhere, Citadel Securities is apparently set to make an offer that some of the Street might find difficult to refuse.
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France’s political and banking troubles obscure good momentum in Societe Generale’s corporate and investment bank. Yes, capital is constrained, but the bank says it is moving in the right direction.
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The bank’s decision to sell a large minority stake in Credit Suisse’s former China JV to BSAM, a Beijing-based fund it has known for decades, is a setback for Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities. The US firm is still committed to expanding in China’s troubled market.
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Diego De Giorgi’s arrival at Standard Chartered has coincided with important changes at the bank. He talks to Euromoney about the transition from investment banker to chief financial officer, and how the firm can further leverage its advantages amid growing profitability and geopolitical risk.
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The region’s tough economic history, coupled with its strength in soft and hard commodities, makes it best positioned to tackle today’s challenges.
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Derivatives structurers are thriving, but regulators aren’t convinced the biggest Wall Street banks have a firm grasp of their complex exposure.
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The Siena-based bank has a better bill of health and is once again a target in Italy.
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Despite an overwhelmingly Italian business in retail, Intesa Sanpaolo has stepped up its share of corporate and investment banking revenue outside the country. In its global growth markets, divisional chief Mauro Micillo says the firm is here to stay.
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With corporates taking a more holistic view of sustainability, banks are under pressure to address concerns over reporting and verification requirements for sustainable working capital, trade finance and liquidity management products.
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It is getting tougher for investors to execute block trades of more than €2 million in Europe’s fragmented equity markets. Matching buyers and sellers needs a return to negotiation and away from pure electronic trading.
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After years of retrenchment, Commerzbank’s head of corporate clients Michael Kotzbauer tells Euromoney of a tentative return to growth. The bank has dodged Germany’s commercial real estate slump but is having to adapt to a worsening geopolitical backdrop. Capital and cost efficiency remain big priorities.
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Rising confidence in European banks has raised hopes of a surge in domestic M&A, perhaps laying the foundations for the long-sought ideal of genuinely pan-European firms.
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John Mathews, head of UHNW Americas for UBS in New York, tells Euromoney why the US’s private banking model is so successful, why the Swiss firm is really in the life counselling business, and explains why it has targeted US ultra-high net worth clients.
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As securities markets shift to T+1, repo is already going intraday with DLR the first of what may be many digital trading platforms to offer JPM Coin for the cash leg.
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By starting from a blank sheet of paper, Royal Bank of Canada hopes its new US cash-management platform will allow it to capture a greater share of wallet from existing clients while not being held back by legacy technology.
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Though HSBC retrenched from other Latin American markets, it stayed in Mexico, and country chief Jorge Arce says that the bank is well-positioned to take advantage of the nation’s unique blend of structural growth drivers.
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The bank is looking to capitalise on its local presence in Latin America as Korean and Chinese firms intensify their nearshoring efforts.
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Unlike other firms in Latin America, BTG Pactual hides its growing retail digital banking business within its wealth-management division. Why?
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Anything except a brief stay on as chairman would cast a baleful shadow over the chief executive’s successor at JPMorgan.
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Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank has made great improvements to its digital offering and environmental, social and governance engagement this year, and is UAE's best Islamic bank as a result.
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Emirates Islamic Bank wins the UAE's most innovative Islamic bank award this year. It launched a range of innovative products and services across several business segments.
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HSBC Saudi Arabia is named Saudi Arabia's best international Islamic bank this year, reflecting its strong performance across capital markets, where it took leading roles in some of the most important regional transactions.
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ADIB Egypt wins Egypt's best international Islamic bank thanks to its strong financial performance and launch of impactful initiatives and products.
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Al Rajhi Bank is named Saudi Arabia's best Islamic bank following a strong performance across several market segments.
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Banque Misr has seen a strong performance in its Shariah-compliant loan book and has been instrumental in several key Islamic finance transactions.
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Citi Islamic Investment Bank has had a good year in Bahrain and impressed with its debt capital markets work during the awards period.
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Qatar Islamic Bank has launched several new digital services which have contributed to an improvement in user engagement. It is Qatar's best Islamic bank this year.
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Across retail, corporate, business, private banking and wealth management, the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank has demonstrated growth, development and regional leadership in the service it offers clients, making it Euromoney’s best Islamic bank in the Middle East.
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Standard Chartered Saadiq wins best international Islamic bank in the UAE this year after strong growth and an improvement in its sustainable product offering.
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Name of borrower: Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB)
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Standard Chartered Saadiq saw new product launches, technological innovation and strong financial results during the awards period, and is Pakistan's best international Islamic bank this year.
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Maybank Islamic wins best domestic Islamic bank in Malaysia following a period marked by strong financial results, impactful environmental, social and governance initiatives and landmark transactions.
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In 2023, Bank BTN, passed a number of milestones, from supporting sustainable housing to launching environmental, social and governance initiatives, and is the best Islamic bank in Indonesia this year.
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HSBC Amanah has reinforced its position as the leading Islamic banking institution in Malaysia this year with robust financial performance and innovative product launches. The bank secures is name as the best international Islamic bank in the country as a result.
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CIMB Niaga Syariah is Indonesia’s best international Islamic bank, having made good progress in digital and sustainability this year.
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Standard Chartered Saadiq has made progress in its commitment to innovation, financial inclusivity and sustainable development, and wins Bangladesh’s best international Islamic bank category this year.
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Standard Bank Shari'ah Banking has focused on product innovation during the awards period and has seen impressive growth across its African operations.
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Standard Bank Shari'ah Banking has been named the best Islamic bank in South Africa following a busy period in the capital markets, the launch of several market-first solutions and impactful community support work.
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Islamic banks have been particularly industrious in their efforts to integrate an environmental, social and governance focus into their core strategy and operations.
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Mashreq Al Islami continues to demonstrate its digital leadership in Islamic banking through the breadth and quality of the services and products it provides. It is Euromoney’s best Islamic digital bank this year.
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It takes structuring expertise, sophistication and a good read of markets to engineer shariah-compliant structured products that perform, especially amid an uncertain and volatile global macroeconomic and markets backdrop.
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There are only a few truly global banking institutions that provide a full range of sophisticated shariah-compliant advice, products and services. HSBC leads this select group, making it Euromoney’s best international Islamic bank for 2024.
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Despite global sukuk issuance falling to its lowest dollar-denominated value in three years, there were still plenty of debuts, innovations and ground-breaking developments last year, and Standard Chartered Saadiq was front and centre of that, making it Euromoney’s best sukuk house for 2024.
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CIMB Investment Bank is Euromoney’s best Islamic project finance house this year following its work on a range of transactions throughout the year, and for one in particular that stood out for its innovation and national importance.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If you visit the website of National Bank of Bahrain (NBB), it doesn’t take long to recognise that it takes corporate responsibility seriously.
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It was another stellar year for First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), under the continued leadership of group chief executive Hana Al Rostamani.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Naz Vahid is to leave Citi after nearly four decades as one of the US bank’s most effective and innovative wealth managers.
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New accounts targeted at low-income customers reflects the reality of intense competition in the sector.
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UK banks, asset managers and individuals see better returns from dumping UK stocks and investing elsewhere, but the impact eventually becomes ruinous.
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The UK government wants to invigorate the UK stock market and sell its stake in NatWest. The bank’s private banking arm wants to boost its investment almost anywhere else.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Recently rebranded and expanded, Wealth at Work is Citi’s most dynamic generator of wealth revenues. Its leader, Naz Vahid, sits down in New York with Euromoney to explain her vision for its future.
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As banks focus more on climate adaptation across their businesses, are they conceding that mitigation efforts are futile?
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The two European banks are both trying to de-emphasise their investment banks and want to build up areas where they see weakness. Barclays is later to this party than Deutsche, but both will have found encouragement in the first three months of 2024.
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The Brazilian neobank is growing its number of clients faster than perhaps any financial institution on earth. Combine this with static unit costs and the operational leverage potential is big. CFO Guilherme Lago explains how its business model is now focused on the next five to 10 years as open banking generates unprecedented price transparency, customer portability and opportunity.
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Junior bankers should relax about the threat to their jobs from AI and lean into opportunities to bluff their way to Wall Street glory.
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Intesa Sanpaolo’s Isybank is the latest in-house neobank to run into trouble. But the desire to migrate core-banking systems onto the cloud is still encouraging other banks to follow this strategy.
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A move back up in rates is creating a PR battle among Wall Street banks. JPMorgan was punished for a cautious outlook, Goldman Sachs promoted strong fixed income trading results and Bank of America projected a Zen approach to rate moves.
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China’s Project Whitelist, launched at the start of the year, exists to ensure bank funding for property development. But it is there to protect projects, not the developers behind them.
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Rumours that FAB is in exploratory talks with a Turkish lender, together with hopes for a big-ticket IPO, point to optimism despite the dire outlook on inflation.
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Morgan Stanley’s wealth business went from 2.5 million client relationships to 18 million over the course of a couple of years. Now, a quartet of steely US regulators is looking at how the division manages potentially risky clients. Given its rapid pace of growth, this is perhaps less of a surprise than it initially appears.
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Does Banco Galicia’s acquisition of HSBC Argentina validate president Javier Milei or weaken him?
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The Singapore lender is looking to India in search of new business and growth opportunities, its chief executive Piyush Gupta tells Euromoney. Long term, it aims to emulate onshore the country’s best private-sector lenders, HDFC and Kotak Mahindra.
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As banks retreat to their home markets, they must find reliable partners to serve corporate customers overseas or risk losing them.
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Isbank’s chief executive Hakan Aran sees embedded finance and an innovative approach to bank branches as the future as the Turkish bank looks to rebuild on a better market environment for its 100-year anniversary.
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The good news is that bank executives don’t see big loan losses ahead; the bad news is that they lack the confidence and vision to invest in the business.
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After a decade of restructuring, EFG International ramped up hiring last year – above all from Credit Suisse. Chief executive Giorgio Pradelli talks about the firm’s scope to lead a wave of Swiss-bank consolidation, while doubling down on new wealth from the Middle East and Asia.
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The paradox of Itaú is that it has maintained its leadership of Brazil’s banking sector with an ease and assuredness in recent years that belies the radical and continual transformation going on under the surface. The bank’s CFO, Alexsandro Broedel, tells Euromoney that its management’s only real constant is to view every new player as an existential threat – and react accordingly.
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Credit Suisse’s domestic bank was arguably the failed group’s best and strongest division. One year after the rescue, UBS is not the only one trying to feast on its domestic wealth-management and corporate-banking leftovers. Other Swiss and international players also hope to benefit from the longer-term fallout in Switzerland. Will the rush to pick up the remnants of the fallen champion pay off?
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The decision by the US SEC to drop mandatory Scope 3 reporting weakens global emissions reporting standards. However, many corporate issuers are already using Scope 3 performance targets on sustainability-linked transactions for non-regulatory reasons. Are the debt and equities markets leading companies onto ESG ground upon which regulators fear to tread?
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For its impressive commitment to this issue in the country, DBS wins the award for Taiwan’s best for sustainability.
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DBS wins the award for Taiwan’s best international private bank in recognition of the quality of its services and its leading market position in the country.
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Julius Baer wins this award for the investment the firm is making in this core Asian market, as well as the global expertise it offers Indian clients.
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UOB Private Bank wins the award as the only foreign private bank operating onshore in Malaysia.
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UOB Private Bank wins this award for its commitment to and investment in supporting next generation clients.
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DBS wins the award for Singapore’s best domestic private bank for the second consecutive year in recognition of its regional expertise, as well as the strength and sophistication of its wealth management offering.
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DBS wins the award for its strength and innovative leadership in serving family office clients in Singapore.
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DBS wins the award for its expertise in succession planning.
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DBS wins this award for the strength and sophistication of its digital solutions.
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DBS wins this award for best international private bank in Hong Kong in recognition of the quality and breadth of its services and its distinctive regional expertise.
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Euromoney Private Banking Awards: Hong Kong’s best for family-office services: JPMorgan Private BankJPMorgan Private Bank wins the family office award thanks to the quality and range of products, services and advice it provides wealthy Asian families.
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Euromoney Private Banking Awards: Hong Kong’s best for philanthropic advisory: JPMorgan Private BankJPMorgan Private Bank wins this award in recognition of its expertise and global connectivity in philanthropic advisory and services.
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Julius Baer wins the award for Singapore’s best for high net-worth clients in recognition of the impressive range of expertise and capabilities it offers this key client segment.
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Euromoney Private Banking Awards: Singapore’s best international private bank: JPMorgan Private BankJPMorgan Private Bank wins the international private bank award for the power, range and expertise of its cross-business capabilities.
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BNP Paribas has been relentlessly fine-tuning its secondary equities business in Europe for more than a decade. While the primary focus has been on reaching an affordable offering for institutional investor customers of its markets business, clients of the wealth-management business are now also benefiting.
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BNP Paribas Wealth Management’s philanthropy solutions have been a noteworthy part of its wider positive impact offering since 2008. The firm aims to provide clients, free of charge, with proposals that fit each step of their philanthropic journey.
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Caixabank Private Banking wins the award for best domestic private bank in Spain this year having demonstrated strong performance and launched important enhancements in many sectors.
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BNP Paribas Wealth Management shows “a strong dedication to enhancing the client experience through digital means, innovation and research”, according to the judging panel for this year’s private banking awards.
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JPMorgan has been making a strong push in private banking in Europe, the Middle East and Africa over the past three years, substantially growing its numbers of advisers and clients, opening offices from Athens and Brussels to Copenhagen and Manchester, while taking advantage of its big technology budget to invest in new capabilities.
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In its home market, Deutsche Bank has expanded its leadership with high net-worth (HNW) customers, as well as with the ultra-high net-worth (UHNW) clients that are becoming a core focus in Germany, Europe and cross the globe.
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Serving the next generation of wealthy individuals and family members is at the heart of everything Julius Baer does. The Swiss pure-play wealth manager is cognisant of the vast amount of wealth in the process of being handed from one set of family hands to the next; it sees this segment as a key vehicle for it to, in its words, “live out [its] purpose” and “create value beyond wealth”.
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Societe Generale Private Banking, the wealth-management arm of Societe Generale, is a worldwide private bank with a strong European base. It had €140 billion of assets under management at the end of September 2023.
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Deutsche Bank Private Bank is building a focus on the most challenging customer segment of all: ultra-high net-worth individuals and family offices.
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BNP Paribas Wealth Management has been named Western Europe's best private bank for sustainability this year. One of the many factors supporting this decision is the banks’ ability to embed sustainability into all its product and services by prioritising portfolio assessment and the upskilling of its bankers.
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LGT Private Banking is the private bank of the Princely House of Liechtenstein. Founded in 1920, it operates according to the same values and convictions that have guided the building and managing of its owner’s family assets for almost 900 years, across 26 generations: thinking and acting entrepreneurially; a long-term focus; openness to new developments and technologies; and a disciplined approach to risk and resources.
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BNP Paribas Wealth Management operates across 17 countries, serving a client base of entrepreneurs, family offices and high net-worth individuals.
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The wealth-management divisions of national-champion universal banks have won most of the regional private banking awards in Western Europe. But Lombard Odier offers a powerful reminder of the capabilities of a pure-play private bank, owned by its managing partners who follow a business model solely focused on managing their clients’ assets.
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Few manage to do discretionary portfolio management better than Julius Baer today. The largest pure-play private bank by assets under management has been busy during its latest strategic cycle, which runs for three years through 2025.
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JPMorgan’s wealth management business headed into the coronavirus pandemic with considerable momentum in high and ultra-high net-worth clients. It had only recently founded 23 Wall, a team to advise the biggest and wealthiest families on how to think strategically about the whole panoply of their private assets – everything from companies and property to sports teams and art.
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UBS’s wealth-management business had already seen enviable performance over the 10 years since it set itself the ambition of being the world’s leading global wealth manager in 2012. But, with the acquisition of Credit Suisse, the last 12 months have seen it take another step forward.
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The best private banking franchises today must do much more than simply preserve and grow wealth. They must also enable their clients to share that wealth to meet all manner of broader goals, whether traditionally philanthropic or through the more modern lens of social impact.
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If JPMorgan Private Bank has one objective, it is to provide to clients that magic combination of an institution with the power of a global financial leader and the intimacy of a private-banking relationship. It is led by Mary Callahan Erdoes.
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JPMorgan Private Bank has unveiled a host of new services in recent years, targeting key clients across North America, as well as world-wide.
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Most high net-worth (HNW) individuals in the US plan to pass on their wealth to their children, but according to Bank of America Private Bank, fewer than half are confident that the next generation will make responsible decisions with their inheritance.
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RBC’s global asset-management business underpins its wealth-management offering, and its already dominant position in the Canadian market is increasingly being complemented by a strong showing in the US, as well as other regions around the world.
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The very best franchises serving family offices must get one thing right above all else: they must be able to deliver a customized offering that is sensitive to the particular needs of any client. The larger the institution, the more services it can deploy to do this, but the higher the risk of a cookie-cutter approach to clients, requiring them to adapt to the service provider rather than the other way around.
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Key to succession planning is having a team with that critical combination of technical expertise in the relevant fields of estate and trust planning, but also a history of advising the wealthiest families in approaches that can then be successfully deployed and tailored in the service of new clients who might have similar characteristics.
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At a time when geopolitical and macroeconomic turmoil are more bewildering than ever, the need for the guiding hand of a thoughtful investment research and strategy operation is greater than ever for private-banking clients.
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Once again, Morgan Stanley takes the award for best private bank for sustainability in North America this year. The bank shows consistent leadership in this space with its Investing with Impact platform that now boasts over 300 financial products and accounted for $69 billion in client assets, as of September 2023.
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At the heart of Goldman Sachs’s approach to discretionary portfolio management is the belief that all the bank’s institutional clients ought to have access to the kind of expertise and strategies that historically might only have been accessible to the very biggest.
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For its mix of global capability with local expertise and philanthropic efforts, JPMorgan wins the award for Sweden’s best international private bank.
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DNB Private Banking has been named this year’s best bank for family-office services in the Nordics and Baltics.
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The award for the best international private bank in the Nordics and Baltics goes to JPMorgan Private Bank this year. Among other things, the US lender impressed the judging panel with the philanthropic commitments it has facilitated for clients in the region.
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Emirates NBD Private Banking’s retail banking and wealth management division generated its highest-ever revenue and strongest loan growth during the awards period and the firm is named Euromoney’s best private bank in the Middle East this year.
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The challenges presented by the pandemic and broader geopolitical tensions have meant that the role of the chief investment office has become especially important to any private banking offering in the Middle East.
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Lombard Odier takes home the award for Euromoney’s best pure play private bank in the Middle East this year. The Swiss firm has transformed its presence in the region over the last few years.
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Investment research is about more than producing reports and roundtables. It is about creating quality resources that clients trust and respect.
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BNP Paribas Wealth Management has been named Euromoney’s best international private bank in the Middle East for 2024.
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In a region where most private-sector commercial activity is undertaken by family businesses, succession planning and wealth transfer could not be more important.
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The family-office sector in the Middle East has become increasingly important in recent years, with more and more local and international family offices setting up in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
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Emirates NBD has been named Euromoney’s best private bank for digital solutions in the Middle East for a second year in a row.
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Ultra-high net-worth can be the most challenging client segment to service for private banks. The investable assets these clients provide can come with challenging demands and complicated needs.
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Discretionary portfolio management is an important part of Lombard Odier’s offering worldwide, and this is reflected in its business in the Middle East.
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Sustainable finance came under intense scrutiny across the Middle East when COP28 took place in Dubai last year.
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Until recently Latin America’s best bank for sustainability in Euromoney’s private banking awards would not have been a domestic franchise. Environmental, social and governance considerations came relatively late to Latin America, and the first wave of ESG-labelled investment funds was an imported novelty from the international banks – particularly the Europeans.
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BTG Pactual’s next-generation service proposition is closely – but not exclusively – correlated with its family-office activities, so it is no surprise that its strength in the latter translates into leadership in the former.
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Credicorp Capital’s investment in investment research is a differentiator for a local private bank. The regional coverage provides excellent breadth, but it is the depth in certain areas that provides its client base with different investment ideas.
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Credicorp Capital retains its award for being the best private bank for discretionary portfolio management in 2024.
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In Brazil – and indeed throughout Latin America – the family-office business is critical for private banks.
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If necessity is the mother of innovation, then it is perhaps no surprise that Santander Private Banking’s digital platform – which spans all the main Latin American private-banking clients – was the one that impressed the judges the most.
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With the growth in wealth in all regions – and particularly in Latin America, which has seen a soft commodities-boom generate large increases in the high net-worth segment in recent years – the key to serving these clients is efficiency.
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In recent years, the private banking industry in Latin America has been undergoing rapid transformation, with lower real interest rates and digitalization fragmenting traditional brands. And senior bankers forming their own boutiques.
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Santander Private Banking in Latin America enjoys certain natural advantages thanks to the bank’s geographical footprint and strategy. Overlaying the global bank’s strength within the region is dominance in Spain and Europe more broadly, as well as a presence in the US. This perfectly matches the domestic market for private banking in Latin America – the local presence is essential to serve these clients – while also offering access to the main markets that Latin Americans tend to think of first when seeking portfolio diversification.
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As the oldest private bank based in the southeast of Brazil – the traditional powerhouse of wealth in the country – Itaú Private Bank has an inbuilt advantage when it comes to managing the generational succession in private banking.
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Santander Private Banking’s ultra-high net-worth segment is called Private Wealth and covers clients who have more than €20 million. The bank has been growing this segment in recent years and it now has more than 100 dedicated bankers and specialists in Latin America.
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OTP Private Banking is putting resources into sustainability and showing signs of progress in the area. At a group level, improved scores by several environmental, social and governance ratings agencies are testament to its improvements in the area recently. For example, it moved from a medium- to low-risk ranking by Sustainalytics.
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OTP Private Banking’s approach to digital development and innovation is predicated on a regional approach, helping the firm benefit from its presence across central and eastern Europe.
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UniCredit’s importance as a private bank in Central and Eastern Europe is particularly evident in its service offering for high net-worth individuals.
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OTP Private Banking says it has recently embarked on an overhaul of its discretionary portfolio management services. This involves redefining the workflow to reflect topical industry themes, such as the focus on environmental, social and governance, as well as the implementation of what it describes as revolutionary new front-office software and a focus on increasing client alpha.
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Chief executive Andrea Orcel has made it clear that Central and Eastern Europe remains at the heart of UniCredit, not least through the purchase of Greek lender Alpha Bank’s Romanian operations last year.
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Over the past decade, OTP Group has grown as a regional bank in central and eastern Europe – even as other international banks have begun to retreat from the region. Listed in Budapest since 1995, the group now covers 12 countries, counting 17 million customers. Although it is headquartered in Hungary, it also considers itself a market leader in Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Slovenia in terms of the overall banking market, including retail.
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Julius Baer’s commitment to Asia has certainly paid off. Bolstered by a team of 1,600 professionals, including over 430 relationship managers, the bank has achieved a doubling of its assets under management in the region since 2016, establishing itself as the largest pure-play private bank in the region.
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Few things matter more to investors than clarity and foresight. JPMorgan Private Bank's investment strategy team has established itself as an essential navigator, steering clients away from market pitfalls and towards opportunity.
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BNP Paribas Wealth Management has been named Asia’s best private bank for sustainability 2024 in recognition of the firm's comprehensive approach to environmental, social and governance integration and its commendable track record of financial performance.
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United Overseas Bank (UOB), a stalwart in Singapore's banking sector since 1935, now boasts a robust network of 500 branches and offices across 19 countries. UOB is not only a bank with a long history but is also dedicated to spearheading innovative initiatives for the next generation through dynamic and multifaceted programmes.
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Citi Private Bank's chief investment office has adopted a distinctive strategy following the bank's transition to a more streamlined structure that involved shedding regional layers in Asia. This combines its global capabilities with in-depth local expertise.
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While the wealthy have excelled in accumulating and managing their assets, many still struggle with the complexities of passing them on. The urgency of succession planning was underscored by an HSBC Trustee survey in 2023, which found that 85% of global families are actively preparing successors for their business empires. This aligns with forecasts that about $18.3 trillion will change hands among high net-worth families by 2030.
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BNP Paribas Wealth Management has been named Asia’s best bank for discretionary portfolio management (DPM) this year in recognition of its adept navigation of market headwinds and steadfast focus on client-centric service.
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Union Bancaire Privée (UBP), one of Switzerland's most prestigious private banks, has charted a course of strategic growth in Asia throughout 2023.
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Julius Baer has a distinct position in Asia. As the region’s largest pure-play private bank, it is unwavering in its commitment to personalized service.
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This year, DBS has been named Asia’s best private bank for high-net-worth individuals, a testament to its innovative approach in this competitive wealth-management sector.
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With Singapore's ascent to a prominent hub for family offices in Asia, DBS has made quick work of establishing itself as a leading player in the region.
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In a year that has seen Asia's financial institutions face mounting pressures from geopolitical headwinds, DBS retains its mantle as Asia’s best private bank 2024. This award comes in tandem with two other regional honours: best for family office services and best for high net-worth (HNW) individuals. Its managing director and group head is Joseph Poon.
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BNP Paribas Wealth Management is named Asia’s best private bank for digital solutions in 2024. This recognition comes on the back of a year that saw good digital growth and the implementation of a client-centric digital transformation strategy.
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Next-gen clients can be just as diverse as any other private-banking clients, with similar ranges of age, investment goals and overall desire to be involved in the family wealth.
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In an African context in which private family wealth is growing rapidly, Standard Bank Wealth and Investment regards itself as one of the few large regional institutions with a comprehensive family-office service. It sees itself as a pioneer in this area, and wants to maintain a preeminent position in the category as the importance of African family offices continues to grow.
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FNB wins the award for Africa's best private bank for ultra-high net-worth this year. The pan-African lender’s distinctive offering for the super wealthy demonstrates its ability to serve these clients.
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Two key elements of Standard Bank Wealth and Investment’s offering stood out in this category. The first of these, My360, allows clients to visualise and control their financial assets. It offers them an aggregated view of their portfolio across asset classes, providing clients with a view of their net asset value in multiple currencies, and allowing them to delve deeper into different categories from a single dashboard.
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FNB has put succession planning at the heart of its private wealth proposition, taking the view that all clients should have access to the service, regardless of income or balance-sheet value. It considers the needs not only of the existing client but also the aspirations of the next generation.
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FNB is this year’s winner for Africa's best bank for discretionary portfolio management. Not only did the regional lender’s discretionary solutions deliver a strong performance compared with its peers, but the bank also continued to innovate to meet new client needs in 2023.
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As Africa’s largest bank by assets, Standard Bank Wealth and Investment is well-placed to take advantage of the growth of the continent as a private-banking market. The firm is led by Jacques Els.
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Seven years ago, Barclays’ then chief executive Jes Staley decided to gradually sell down its Johannesburg-listed African unit, including retail banks across the continent. But when Credit Suisse announced a strategic refresh in 2021 – including selling its ultra-high net-worth private client book in nine African markets – Barclays saw it as a chance to gain bulk in African private banking once again.
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As part of one of South Africa’s biggest banking groups, FNB’s private wealth offering provides clients with advice across local and offshore portfolios to help them leverage their assets at every stage of their life.
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This year’s winner for best bank for high net-worth (HNW) individuals in Africa, Standard Bank Wealth and Investment, is rewarded for delivering clever tailored solutions to its growing clientele across key African markets.
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Last year was marked by innovation and implementation for 2024’s winner of the award for Africa's best bank for philanthropic advisory: FNB.
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At a group level, BNP Paribas Wealth Management is a perpetual leader in the ever-growing field of sustainability. In 2023, Euromoney called the Paris-based lender the world’s best bank for sustainable finance for the third year in a row. We cited its status as the poster child for providing sustainable banking at scale, and its big and bold shift away from fossil fuels.
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Competition in the high net-worth category is fierce: every private bank targets HNW customers, with the aim of making as many as possible of them long-term customers.
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India is a key market for Julius Baer. Onshore, it is the largest foreign private bank, with a history stretching back more than 30 years, catering to high and ultra-high net-worth customers.
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Deutsche Bank Private Bank is far from the only global wealth manager to have transformed its business model and its fortunes in recent years.
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JPMorgan Private Bank says that it has “always been intentional about engaging future generations”. People are transitory and money can be too, but it doesn’t have to be. Any family knows wealth can be lost as easily as it can be won, and consistently falling on the right side of that equation means engaging the next generation, and the one after that.
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In 2023, Singapore attracted S$12.7 billion ($9.43 billion) in fixed asset investments, amid a challenging global environment, according to data from the country’s economic development board. The previous year it was even higher, at S$22.5 billion.
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Traditionally, the route to acquiring new clients was achieved via the expansion of an adviser’s personal network. This was cultivated by doing the rounds, attending events and conferences, and through referrals. Business was steadily attained, then systematically, over years and even generations, retained.
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Deutsche Bank Private Bank takes this award for the second year in a row. The German lender was founded more than 150 years ago with the express aim of supporting entrepreneurs in its home market and, later, beyond.
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“We take pride in being a trusted partner, not only in exclusive investment and financing solutions, but also in environmental, social and governance opportunities, legacy and estate planning, wealth planning, and philanthropy,” Deutsche Bank Private Bank declared in its pitch document for this award.
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“Philanthropy is in our DNA.” So says JPMorgan Private Bank, which for more than 160 years has served as a philanthropy adviser and investment manager to many of the world’s leading charitable institutions and philanthropists.
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Amid the constant hum of activity in the private-banking world, it can be easy to forget the importance of discretionary portfolio management.
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JPMorgan Private Bank clients enjoy the best of both worlds: an intimate relationship with a US lender that is allied to the power of a genuinely global financial leader. It is led by Mary Callahan Erdoes.
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Citi’s chief investment office is at the heart of Citi Private Bank. And at the heart of that is David Bailin, the US bank’s chief investment officer.
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Liechtenstein-based LGT Private Banking is a standout leader in family-office services for good reason. Anyone wealthy enough to have their own family office is looking for a blend of attributes from their main provider: ideas and innovation on the one hand; safety and stability on the other.
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Goldman Sachs has been helping clients manage the tricky process of safely and seamlessly moving money from one generation to the next for, well, generations.
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Goldman Sachs has a 22-year track record of outperformance in creating, analysing and constantly reassessing wealth management portfolios. Key to this is its internal Investment Strategy Group’s (ISG) proprietary strategic asset-allocation data crunching, and the way its wealth advisers engage with the ISG team to provide tailored investment recommendations to ultra-high net-worth individuals, family offices and institutional investors.
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Reports that the long-rumoured deal has been agreed suggest growing optimism among Argentine bankers about the new administration.
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The German lender’s decision to put its chips on southeast Asia is paying off handsomely. Under the leadership of Asia CEO Alexander von zur Mühlen, Deutsche Bank has doubled its capital in Vietnam and Indonesia, with more to come, moved a host of global roles to the region, and has seen Asean eclipse its India and China business in terms of growth and absolute numbers.
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Asset managers and industry regulators face operational challenges around the tokenization of private assets.
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Caution at local commercial banks – coupled with the eagerness of large investment banks to foster relationships with private equity players – means large real-estate deals fuelled by back leverage could be primed for a comeback in Europe.
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For a deeply unpopular government with little room to manoeuvre, the chance to bribe voters with a cheap offer of bank shares is irresistible. The bank in question is now well-run and profitable while its stock still trades at a discount. But the great NatWest share offer will do little to revive UK capital markets.
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Luring star bankers from rivals – like Citi’s appointment of JPMorgan veteran Viswas Raghavan – can bring hidden costs beyond the expense of replacing stock options for the lucky new hire.
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The UBS chief investment office’s sustainable and impact investing strategist wants to avoid measurement for the sake of measurement, but responding to client demand for more data while ensuring its readability remains a challenge.
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The leading neobanks in Brazil seem to have hit their stride in terms of profitability just as some of the traditional banks have stumbled. Are these firms the future of Brazilian banking?
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The Brazilian government’s changes to the laws governing its tax-exempt debentures have allayed financial market fears that president Lula intends to rely on BNDES to fund billions spending on infrastructure, crowding out private-sector finance.
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Leading commercial banks are focusing on their approach to relationship management to reassure corporate customers that they are being listened to.
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Chinese fintech Ant Group has offered UBS a reported $250 million for Credit Suisse’s China joint venture, outbidding Citadel Securities. It is a timely reminder that despite its current malaise, Asia’s largest economy is still a great long-term place to invest.
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There are sensible elements to CEO Slawomir Krupa’s plans for Societe Generale, but their communication needs attention.
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In 2020, Deutsche Bank’s Asia chief, Alexander von zur Mühlen, placed more of his chips on fast-growing southeast Asia. As global firms diversify out of China, his prescience and willingness to deliver on his convictions is starting to pay off.
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Investors and staff at Societe Generale are slowly starting to understand chief executive Slawomir Krupa’s brutally honest approach to the bank’s many challenges. Taking them with him as he embarks on his restructuring plan may prove a more delicate task.
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Chief executive Jane Fraser has been true to her promise of a marquee hire to run Citi’s banking division, with the appointment today of JPMorgan veteran Viswas Raghavan. He brings a wealth of both transactional and operational management experience, but the symbolism of his arrival may be just as important.
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Diego De Giorgi’s arrival as Standard Chartered’s CFO coincides with a shift away from asset shrinkage and a “final push” on digital transformation.
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Barclays chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan intends to stop a low-returning investment bank from dragging the rest of the group down with it. He argues that most of the improvements are within the bank’s own grasp. That is debatable, and in any case hardly reassuring.
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The UK government’s impending sale to retail investors of a big stake in the bank informs the shadow-play guidance on this year’s earnings.
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Boosting the role of corporate treasury by enabling it to centralize group-wide FX management may sound appealing, but implementation and cost challenges should not be underestimated.
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One of the first edicts handed down by Citi’s wealth head is to tell all private bankers to track and record client calls. It has ruffled feathers at the US lender, but if it transforms the unit into the powerhouse CEO Jane Fraser wants it to be, then so be it.
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He leaves the Australian financial firm after transforming its commodities and global markets division, and despite being widely tipped as likely to succeed current CEO Shemara Wikramanayake.
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The hard graft of integrating Credit Suisse still lies ahead, leaving UBS as a concept stock and hopeful investors looking through the efforts of the next three years.
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No industry will be more overwhelmingly affected by new forms of artificial intelligence – both generative-AI and other technology to come – than banking. Costly but cost-effective, it is up to banks to make AI work for them, not the other way around.
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Citi’s head of Asia treasury and trade solutions has retired after 40 years at the US bank. He tells Euromoney what he would do if he were a 20-something graduate today, and why it helps to be both a specialist and a jack-of-all-trades in the industry now.
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Internal and external reforms are under way as the new president signals a break with the previous administration.
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Extracting value from Russia via a stake in Strabag previously owned by Oleg Deripaska shouldn’t be confused with a proper disentanglement from Russia by Raiffeisen. The main impetus for the transaction may, in fact, lie with Deripaska and Strabag’s other shareholders.
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Management changes expand the responsibilities of Marianne Lake and Jennifer Piepszak, lead candidates to one day head JPMorgan, but there is another contender.
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Opposition to the proposed Basel III endgame for US banks is now so widespread that a climb down by the Federal Reserve is likely. Wall Street bankers like Jamie Dimon can stop crying wolf about increased capital requirements and think carefully about publicly threatening their regulators.
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Corporate and development banks want their capital to reach the smallest and most impactful of SMEs in frontier markets. Traditional credit ratings and risk assessments can get in the way.
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Record regional bank profits, plus strong capital ratios in Western Europe, have fuelled hope for more bank acquisitions in Central and Eastern Europe. The uncertain effect of recent court rulings on Swiss franc mortgages, however, is a big obstacle to deals in Poland.
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They already dominate the investment banking business in Europe, and now the leading US banks have their eyes on an even bigger prize. They see their vast investments in the digital technology transforming payments and transaction services and their retained global presences as the keys to winning even greater revenues from Europe’s midsize corporates.
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Some banks like the idea of external venture capitalists leading their venture businesses, but banker-led units are more likely to cement their inherent advantage.
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It has become fashionable to describe private credit as an opaque and fast inflating bubble that could bring crisis to the global financial system. But in Asia even banks and regulators hope it will grow to bridge the yawning financing gap.
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Collaboration between national banks has seen widespread adoption of mobile payments schemes. The French and German-led approach of focusing on a single European scheme could therefore be seen as a distraction. But is it the only real way of keeping US payment companies at bay?
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Regulators are making more mileage out of their settlement with Morgan Stanley than the outcome really deserves.
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Morgan Stanley has for years touted its expertise and adherence to confidentiality as reasons to choose it over rivals for equity block trades. But charges brought by regulators over leakages of confidential information by the bank’s former head of US equity syndicate and another employee now make its historic claims look embarrassing.
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The World Bank is issuing ‘outcomes’ bond structures for niche sustainability themes and with new financing mechanisms. Like blue bonds, they are probably going to need some rule-setting.
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Siemens is anchor client for a new rules-based approach to banking.
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The annual Senate quizzing of US big bank chief executives threw up all the usual favourite partisan arguments, but little else. If this is oversight, it often lacks insight.
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The appointment of Marcelo Noronha as chief executive of Bradesco should probably have taken place five years ago. Is he still the right man for the job?
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Barclays hopes to win over investors with new return targets and buyback commitments next February, but it really needs a revival in investment banking.
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The bank must broaden its horizons if performance is to improve.
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When Kevin Gartside was medically discharged from the British army in 2012 after three tours of duty in Iraq, he was unsure what to do next. He saw cross-over appeal in banking, an industry with a surprisingly flat operating structure that prizes punctuality, teamwork, adaptability and decision making.
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Standard Chartered’s corporate and institutional bank can increase its profitability even when rates fall, divisional head Simon Cooper tells Euromoney. After reaping the benefit of investments in cash management, he is now turning to the financial markets business, especially credit – reinforcing efforts to grow clients in Europe and the Americas.
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Sector shows strong profit performance in the third quarter as asset quality improves.
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As Citi presses on with its consumer-banking exits around the world, the job of defining what its international network now represents falls to its newly appointed head of international, Ernesto Torres Cantú.
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Jane Fraser, chief executive of Citi since March 2021, has a mighty task on her hands. Like so many of her predecessors, she faces the puzzle of how to articulate an identity for a bank that always seems to be trying to do too much at once. So far, she has focused on redefining the scope of the firm and most recently on adapting its structure to fit that. The hardest part – fixing the bank’s woeful returns – is still to come.
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Big banks are scrutinized on environmental, social and governance matters today as never before and they must often walk a tightrope between competing interests. Citi is no exception.
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Andy Sieg is back again from Merrill Lynch, and has big plans for Citi’s new global wealth franchise.
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Exiting consumer banking in a range of markets around the world was one of Jane Fraser's first steps when she became Citi’s chief executive. The immensely complex task would need the safest of hands.
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UK banks that focus on tech are seemingly rewarded with greater customer trust.
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Rakuten needs money – and lots of it – as its mobile telecommunications arm continues to burn cash. But it is running out of things to sell, while its debt profile is miserable.
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A $3.5 billion deal attracts $36 billion of demand, answering the question of whether Swiss banks can return to this market after Credit Suisse's collapse.
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OTP Bank recorded impressive growth in lending volumes during the awards period and has also advised on some landmark financings.
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ING Bank’s commitment to sustainable and responsible banking in Germany makes the best bank for environmental, social and governance in the country this year.
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Mongolia’s five big lenders have successfully completed their IPOs, doubling the size of the local stock market. But the challenge of attracting more foreign institutional investment remains.
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Singapore’s DBS Bank has spent the past decade transforming itself into one of the world’s best digital banks. But a series of lengthy service outages over the past year has wrongfooted senior management, who have been left to issue apologies and pledge to do better.
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Barclays has made visible progress across the board in environmental, social and governance, advising on large sustainability financings, enhancing its sustainable mortgages and offering more support to green startups.
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A wealth manager, who came into a legendary but unstable global investment bank and transformed it, hands on a very different and much better firm.
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Continuity is likely to be the theme as incoming leader inherits a well-performing franchise, but competition in wealth management and the markets businesses, as well as a still-lacklustre environment for investment banking, will be among Pick’s challenges.
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The CEO of Goldman Sachs has (mostly) hung up his cans. His colleagues hope that other noise will now die down too – and they think there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic.
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Andrea Orcel’s complex deal with Alpha Bank ultimately opens a new front in the Milan-based lender’s pan-European strategy: Greece.
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Citi’s sale of its China consumer wealth portfolio to HSBC for $3.6 billion is a nuanced tale of two banks with increasingly different strategies. As HSBC tilts ever more toward Asia, Citi proves ever more inclined to see all financial services through a global prism.
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While banks have accelerated digital solutions across business lines, accomplishing end-to-end digitalization of global trade remains far beyond their reach. The complexity of supply-chain finance remains a challenge, and banks continue to hunt for scalable solutions. Embedded finance could be the answer.
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In one of his last interviews in office, Ignazio Visco sets the record straight on his controversial 12 years as Italy’s central bank governor: a period of almost constant crisis. Today, the country’s NPL problems seem cured but, as he acknowledges, simmering risks remain.
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Sustainability-linked loans have faced growing criticism for their opacity and concerns around greenwashing. Sustainability-linked loan bonds could help to bring more transparency to the market and help legitimise these structures.
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Digital banks look to online games to help drive retention.
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It is rare that a popular, fast-growing and secure financial product is put at risk, but could the boom in FGTS loans in Brazil be under existential threat?
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Bidding $2.5 billion for the bulk of Credit Suisse’s sub-Saharan Africa ultra-high net-worth private bank book 18 months ago has been a ‘game changer’ for Barclays in the region, the UK bank’s Africa market head Amol Prabhu tells Euromoney.
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Deutsche Bank’s Mexico team says the country is vital for Latin American credibility and that nearshoring will drive FDI in the coming decade.
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A market-beating increase in UniCredit’s share price is just the beginning, chief executive Andrea Orcel tells Euromoney. He must now prove the many remaining sceptics wrong and show the bank can still thrive when net interest margins fall and credit costs rise.
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More banks have announced partnerships with asset managers to place loans into private debt funds that offer investors better risk-adjusted returns than bank equity.
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As a relative outsider, Slawomir Krupa might have appeared better suited to the chief executive job at Societe Generale precisely because it had done so badly under an establishment insider. BNP Paribas’ good performance, by contrast, would make the traditional background of its rumoured chief-executive-in-waiting, Marguerite Bérard, less of a barrier.
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MUFG’s vast balance sheet has the potential to make a considerable difference to Japan’s net-zero ambitions. But the bank won’t be pulling back from polluters, arguing that money needs to flow to where emissions are, not away from them.
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Euromoney Foreign Exchange Awards 2023: Global market leader – best FX market innovator: BNP ParibasThe evolution of ALiX is testimony to BNP Paribas’s commitment to innovation. Over the last four years this personal digital execution assistant has expanded to cover all available products in Cortex FX in one small widget that fits neatly in the corner of a client’s screen.
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Deutsche Bank has maintained good market share across both forwards and swaps during a period of underlying currency volatility and short-term interest rate volatility.
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D&I is recognised and promoted as one of five core values at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), the others being Client First, Collaboration, Accountability and Integrity.
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The release of its new pricing and analytics platform for FX swaps, Neo STIR Analytics, has transformed how UBS engages with clients trading in FX swaps.
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JPMorgan has expanded its footprint in the non-deliverable forwards (NDF) space, supporting pricing capabilities across a wide range of currencies including seven Latin American pairs (BRL, MXN, ARS, CLP, COP, PEN, UYU) as well as frontier-market currencies such as the Costa Rican colón, Dominican peso, and Guatemalan quetzal.
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BNP Paribas leads from the front in its development of trading technology. Innovation is at the heart of the business, and the focus on technology and product rollouts has involved notable developments to its FX algo suite.
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Flexibility and parameterization are expected to become key differentiators for FX execution algos as the market continues to evolve. JPMorgan’s algo suite offers both in abundance.
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UBS’s extended coverage across multiple time zones and consistent liquidity provision – even during challenging market conditions – has boosted its market share particularly in emerging-market options.
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UBS is a powerhouse in the FX industry with a strong reputation for liquidity provision.
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Deutsche Bank’s FX business continues to grow.
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UBS's single-dealer platform, UBS Neo, has benefited from a full front-to-back transformation over the last four years, enabling the bank to offer clients access to consistent liquidity provisioning in foreign exchange across products and currency pairs.
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Euromoney Foreign Exchange Awards 2023: Best bank services – best FX bank for wealth management: UBSUBS is recognised in the FX industry as a leading liquidity provider with a presence in all key trading centres around the globe. It is also the largest global wealth manager, with an unrivalled global footprint when it comes to accessing private clients. This has given UBS a unique opportunity that it has successfully capitalised on.
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Societe Generale’s strong historical footprint in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa, together with its growing business in the Middle East, mean that the French bank has a combination of deep knowledge and competitive local presence in the CEEMEA region.
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BNP Paribas has continually enhanced its e-books in spots, forwards and swaps over the last 12 to 18 months, which has allowed the business to provide greater liquidity and more competitive prices, even during the height of volatility.
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Deutsche Bank’s investment in principal resting order (PRO) technology for spot FX trades has enabled clients to earn spread while trading with the bank. PRO also enables the bank to further increase its internalization rate and hence reduce market impact for the entire client franchise.
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Santander’s presence in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay means it is well positioned to support clients across Latin America.
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Deutsche Bank’s spot market share has increased by 13% over the review period, driven by innovations in electronic pricing solutions, thought leadership and a dedicated global voice-trading team that is able to keep the liquidity tap running for clients in the face of macroeconomic challenges.
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Wells Fargo has worked to become a top-tier institutional FX provider by leveraging its robust corporate and commercial FX franchise. To accomplish this, it has been actively building its capabilities in the e-trading space.
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UBS has invested and innovated in its liquidity offering for the last 20 years – the result is its strong reputation for quality and reliability, particularly during periods of market dislocation.
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Commerzbank has forged longstanding relationships and established bilateral credit lines with clients in frontier markets that few other banks support. This allows those clients access to international markets and competitive FX pricing that they would otherwise struggle to access.
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With a presence in 19 markets globally, including Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India and the US as well as Europe, DBS delivered a record total income of S$16.5 billion ($12 billion) in 2022, a 20% increase in net profits to S$8.19 billion, return on equity of 15% and S$20.5 billion in sustainable financing loans.
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With its pan-European team of 45 people in seven countries in continental Europe, including Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands and the UK, BNP Paribas combines regional coverage with local expertise.
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Nordea Bank posted a larger than expected increase operating profit in the second quarter of 2023, to €1.72 billion, an increase of 26% year on year. Net interest income grew by 40% to €1.83 billion.
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Emirates NBD is one of the leading financial services brands in the United Arab Emirates.
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JPMorgan’s global commercial real estate revenue grew to $806 million in the second quarter of 2023, from $642 million in the first quarter.
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In 2022, BBVA partnered with US venture capital firm Fifth Wall to invest in technologies that address climate change in the real estate and construction industries, which together make up about 40% of global carbon emissions.
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Standard Bank Group (SBG), Africa’s largest bank, completed real estate transactions in many countries during the review period. It extended 20 new facilities totalling $249.05 million to both existing and new clients, and 13 refinancings totalling $408.8 million to existing clients.
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BlackRock joins Allfunds initiative to distribute new variants of private equity and credit funds to wealthy individuals.
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Euromoney talks to Jacques Levet, chief digital officer at BNP Paribas, about the competitive advantage that newly acquired FX fintech Kantox offers.
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Slawomir Krupa may yet turn around Societe Generale. But it won’t be by shock and awe.
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A Citi survey of family offices finds some unsurprising things to say about the worries of the wealthy – inflation, interest rates and geopolitics – but discovers a shocking lack of preparation for succession planning.
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Despite tweaks to improve efficiency, Societe Generale’s new strategy has received a lukewarm reception. New CEO Slawomir Krupa has lifted the capital target, but revenues will remain flat, and there is a lack of news on asset sales.
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Bankers at Lloyds say that progress in FX, fixed income and structured finance this year reflects chief executive Charlie Nunn’s strategy for targeted growth in corporate and institutional banking.
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Securities finance practitioners are taking a mix of approaches to managing cash, funding and liquidity in a shortened settlement cycle.
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Should we take Vivek Ramaswamy literally or seriously?
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As other investment banks cut staff, HSBC has been hiring to build a leading bank in tech and healthcare.
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After buying parts of BNP Paribas and Societe Generale, Orabank is African banking group Vista’s boldest acquisition yet. Despite coups and sovereign debt distress, Vista’s founder and chairman Simon Tiemtoré tells Euromoney how he can succeed where other higher profile ventures have failed.
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The Brazilian bank is focused on new initiatives aimed at boosting active-user rates, including a new global app and buy-now-pay-later product.
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Despite the cross-border growth of Hungary’s OTP Bank and the regional potential of Romania’s Banca Transilvania, banking in central and eastern Europe is increasingly a national game.
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The manner of the campaign against chief executive David Solomon risks causing the lasting damage that his internal opponents presumably wish to avoid.
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Despite its roots in the region, HSBC’s Asian woes have sometimes seemed endemic. It has been overly dependent on Hong Kong and too often caught in Sino-US crosshairs. But under regional co-CEOs Surendra Rosha and David Liao, the lender has regained its confidence, is more regionally diverse than ever, and is busy posting record profits.
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Moody’s took a swing at US banks last night. The moves might have seemed indiscriminate, but it’s hard to argue with the conclusions. After the scares of March, the sector is far from out of the woods.
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It is no surprise to find the ACCC blocking ANZ’s takeover of Suncorp. It is eye-catching, though, to see the regulator naming a deal it would prefer to see happen.
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Goldman Sachs is losing a key executive in the very business it is relying on to turn the firm's fortunes around.
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Banks including NatWest and JPMorgan are struggling to put out reputational risk-management fires.
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The NatWest chief executive’s resignation ends a solid if unexciting three-and-a-half years at the helm.
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BlackRock, JPMorgan and McKinsey are working on plans for a new development finance institution focused on Ukraine’s reconstruction. The project has already had to temper some ambitions, but its advisers still hope it can propel flows of private-sector money to Ukraine in years to come.
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Credit growth is a key driver of stellar earnings from India’s banks as the country completes its recovery from Covid-19, but another driver is digital traction.
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ADIB’s almost 10-times oversubscribed additional tier-1 issuance shows interest in the product is alive and well for the right issuer, but demand won’t be the same for every bank.
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The German lender has named Claudio de Sanctis as its new head of private bank and created a single, unified division – part of longstanding plans to generate more income from the business by rooting out inefficiencies and tapping into new global income streams.
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Temasek, as an equity-only sovereign wealth vehicle, had a bad year. A close look at its portfolio positioning helps us understand what it is doing about it.
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Big banks capable of competing with US players are part of Europe’s geostrategic interests, Deutsche Bank CEO tells audience at Euromoney dinner.
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UOB’s transformative initiatives have earned it the title of Singapore’s best bank once more.
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HSBC remained formidable in the Hong Kong market over the past year and is now well positioned to reap the benefits of mainland China and Hong Kong’s post-Covid reopening.
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Prudence and caution was the mantra at CIMB Bank in the past year, and it served the bank and its chief executive Abdul Rahman Ahmad well. Revenues in 2022 rose 7.6% year on year, net profits before tax rose 38.1% and loans 5.6%. The bank also gained market share in mortgages, auto loans and credit cards.
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Chinese banks have not had an easy ride in recent years. Faltering economic growth, muted domestic demand, tight Covid restrictions and growing scrutiny from regulators have forced them to hunker down and work as best as they can.
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If an organization in Latin America – corporate, sovereign or multilateral – wants to raise finance, Citi will invariably be part of the conversation. The bank’s financing team, led by Adrian Guzzoni, head of debt capital markets for Latin America, and Marcelo Millen, head of equity capital markets for Latin America, has shown that Citi’s ability to access local and international sources of funding and to present options spanning debt, loans and equity is a compelling proposition for finance departments across the region.
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It is tempting to conclude that Citi’s impressive suite of treasury management services, for which it wins the award of Latin America’s best bank for transaction services, is the result of the bank knowing that it really needs to excel in this area. Given the growth strategy being pursued by chief executive Jane Fraser, which has seen the bank pull out of many retail banking markets to focus on corporate and investment banking, a market-leading transaction services offering is imperative.
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Banco Santander’s headquarters are in Europe, but the centre of gravity of its operations has been drifting westward to Latin America for many years now. Over the review period, the bank posted a solid year of progress among many of its Latin American markets, which comprise Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia and Peru.
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Latin America saw increased interest from many different types of acquirers in the past year as volatility elsewhere boosted the relative attractiveness of the region’s economic, legal and regulatory frameworks.
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There is no better wealth manager in Latin America than Banco Santander. It won the award for best private bank in Latin America in Euromoney’s 2023 private banking awards.
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The retrenchment that Citi has made in the retail markets of central America has clearly not impacted its dominance of corporate and investment banking in the region. It wins the award for central America’s best investment bank again this year.
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Banco Pichincha has been developing several strategies to boost social inclusion and improve gender dynamics in Ecuador. The bank now has an impressive portfolio of projects that fit under the corporate responsibility banner.
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It is not much fun being a banker in Argentina. But while it is pretty much universally tough for everyone, spare a thought for individuals like Juan Parma, HSBC’s chief executive Argentina and head of wealth and personal banking America. Because, while Parma’s peers in Argentine banks face many of the same challenges he does, at least for them the whole organization is still focused on the country. HSBC’s global leadership could be forgiven for skipping over the country in global strategy meetings.
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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.
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This year’s winner of the award for Latin America’s best digital bank, Davivienda, has not just adopted the digital channels of new startup rivals but has gone further. The bank has embraced digital banking, blockchain adaptation, artificial intelligence and the metaverse. The result is an intriguing and compelling mix of upgraded old-bank processes through digital infrastructure and completely new business opportunities.
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BNP Paribas’s sustainability strategy for Latin America continues to mature, underpinning the bank’s strong position across the continent. The bank has made considerable efforts to deepen its focus on the three most important sustainability issues in Latin America: protecting biodiversity, promoting social development and decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries.
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When financial analysts argue about whether economies of scale exist in cross border retail banking, they simply need to point to BAC International Bank (BAC). Led by Rodolfo Tabash, the bank is a big player in all the regional markets and, while these are small individually, together they total more than 50 million people.
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Good perceptions of corporate social responsibility have become ever more important for banks in central and eastern Europe since the start of the war in Ukraine.
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UniCredit has long been regarded as a leader in corporate banking in central and eastern Europe. Transaction services continues to be a vital part of this regional franchise under Riccardo Madinelli, head of transactions and payments for central and eastern Europe.
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Under chief executive Hakan Binbasgil, Akbank demonstrated an innovative and proactive approach to small and medium-sized enterprise banking during the awards period, despite the difficult operating environment in its home market of Turkey.
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The past year has seen Societe Generale play a crucial role in central and eastern Europe’s financing markets, led by Philippe Madar, head of corporate coverage for Europe. It is top of Dealogic’s mandated lead arranger rankings for regional syndicated loans in the awards period. Its market share in loans was almost twice as high as the next ranked bank, and it was also involved in some of the key bond deals during the awards period.
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Wealth management across central and eastern Europe is still in a state of flux, nearly 18 months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In that period, some lenders have pulled back from specific markets in the region; others have sought ways to cut costs by reducing their roster of senior private bankers.
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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.
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Government clients and the reduced presence of international banks are typical features of finance in central and eastern Europe, and M&A is no exception. But the region is not beyond the reach of JPMorgan, central and eastern Europe’s best bank for advisory.
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Despite the war in Ukraine, the past year has seen UniCredit operating with more of the purpose and commitment that international banks in central and eastern Europe too often lack.
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Last year, ING was the first bank in central and eastern Europe to stop providing dedicated finance to new upstream oil and gas fields, despite the fact that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatened energy supply on the continent. The Dutch lender remains the bank of choice for green or sustainability labelled deals in the region.
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Even rivals recognize that OTP Bank has advanced strongly in digital banking recently, ensuring that its technology wins and retains customers in Hungary and across central and eastern Europe.
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UOB is as committed as ever to serving small and medium-sized enterprises in its home base of Singapore – where it reckons it banks one of every two SMEs – as it is to clients in key markets across the region. From mid-sized corporates on the fringes of requiring capital markets services, to micro-enterprises, clients have come to rely on it for funding, financial advice and best-in-class banking services.
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There is perhaps no other digital bank anywhere in the world like kakaobank. Many pure-play digital banks seem to have an in-built ceiling: at a specific point, organizational flaws appear, they cease adding new customers and start to appear more dysfunctional than disruptor.
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Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) is a worthy winner of this award. At the heart of the bank’s philanthropic efforts is its BPI Foundation, which touches the lives of more than one million financially under-served Filipinos in 75 of the country’s 81 provinces.
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Football clubs undergoing a period of transition often talk of needing a transfer window or two to get where they need to be. More often than not, this doesn’t work. Better-run teams continue to make clear-minded decisions that keep them ahead of the pack. Catching up is always hard to do.
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Morgan Stanley is a powerhouse in financing. In Asia Pacific ex-China, the US bank helped to complete 42 equity capital markets deals – more than any other bank over the 12 months to the end of March 2023 – worth a total of $5.4 billion, according to Dealogic. And in debt capital markets, it completed 419 deals worth $46.2 billion.
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It is no surprise that HSBC is Asia’s best bank for sustainable finance for the sixth year in a row. Across its commercial, retail, global banking, markets and securities, capital markets, trade finance and risk management teams, the lender has created an extensive sustainability knowledge base that few of its rivals can match.
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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.
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Citi takes everything it does seriously, but there is a special place in its collective consciousness for transaction services. This often-sprawling area of financial services, which chief executive Jane Fraser calls the crown jewel of the bank, is the beating heart of all Citi stands for.
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Singapore is Asia’s leading private banking hub – and at the heart of that story is DBS, a bank that has remade itself over the past decade and a half into one of the world’s best wealth managers.
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It was ultra-competitive at the top of the M&A league tables in the review period. Goldman Sachs wins the award for Asia’s best bank for advisory this year because it was there on most of the big mergers and acquisitions. The bank advised on 76 deals in Asia Pacific in the 12 months to the end of March 2023, worth a total of $181.9 billion, according to Dealogic, for a 16.87% share of the market.
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Standard Bank Wealth & Investment stands head and shoulders above the wealth management competition in Africa. The South African bank is a regional powerhouse in the sector, with private banking offices in 14 African markets, including Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana, as well as the whole of southern Africa.
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For the second year in a row, Equity Bank is Africa’s best bank for corporate responsibility. Under the leadership of group CEO James Mwangi, Equity Bank continues to create shared value for clients and citizens across its banking business, as well as its foundation, which dates back to 2008.
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Like most of South Africa’s big banks, Nedbank is on a mission to reform and re-engineer its IT system, using it to attract new business, cut costs and roll out new services.
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Compared with European banks that have built African retail operations, Deutsche Bank might not be as well-known as an Africa-focused lender. But it has long had important corporate and investment banking operations on the continent. It is one of the largest correspondent banks for African financial institutions and in the previous decade it helped many African sovereigns issue debut international bonds.
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Evidence of an ability to leverage networks across Africa and beyond has helped Citi win the title of Africa’s best bank for advisory this year. While the firm has a strong franchise in South Africa, the rest of the continent is now becoming more important as a growth market. This award is therefore largely thanks to the team led by chairman of investment banking for Middle East and Africa, Miguel Azevedo, and Claude-Stephanie Ngningha, Citi’s head of investment banking in Africa outside South Africa and Egypt.
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In many African countries, Standard Bank is not as large as it would like to be. But it has a physical presence in 20 African countries and is already by far the biggest pan-African group in terms of its scale in the main sub-Saharan markets, the size of its balance sheet and its absolute profit.
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A combination of rising interest rates, depreciating currencies and poor credit ratings make it difficult for African economies to tap into global financial markets to fund their sustainable transition. At the same time, the impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly severe across the continent.
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Africa’s best bank for transaction services, Societe Generale operates in 19 countries in Africa, with 4.3 million clients, including 175,000 corporate clients. Its global transaction and payment services team is led by Alexandre Maymat.
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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.
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No African lender can match Ecobank Transnational’s reach. The Togo-based financial institution is a worthy winner of this year’s award for Africa’s best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises – the second year in a row it has received the title.