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.

Citi saw impressive growth over 2023 with revenue growth of 16% year on year.

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.

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.

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.

In 2023, Citi saw operating revenues reach around ¥139 billion ($860 million) and total assets climb to ¥6,097 billion.

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.

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.

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.

HSBC grew profit before tax by 188% in 2023 to SLR38.2 billion ($126 million).

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.

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.

Throughout 2023, HSBC expanded its presence in the mainland Chinese market, strengthening its operations and advancing strategic initiatives across many sectors.

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.

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.

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.

OCBC had a busy 2023, launching new FX features, application programming interface (API) integration and improvements to its online platform.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Goldman is transforming its provision of research and insights to make it much easier for investors to form trade ideas.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Focusing on its core strengths has helped Deutsche Bank serve corporate clients amid intense geopolitical, technological and environmental challenges.

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.

For the second year in a row, Standard Bank walks away with the award for the best bank in Africa. And for good reason.

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.

For its mix of sustainable finance structuring expertise and innovation in retail banking, ING wins the award this year.

Led by its head of wealth and investment Jacques Els, Standard Bank Wealth & Investment is a private-banking powerhouse in Africa.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As balance sheet pressures have intensified, Morgan Stanley has been at the forefront of a changing financial sector landscape.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

MUFG, Japan’s largest bank, had an excellent financial year in the 12 months to March 2024, setting new records for the group.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The bank has become a global payments powerhouse, delivering innovation and outperformance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Equity Bank Kenya claims its mission is to empower clients and stakeholders, both socially and economically.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

A regional SME champion shows how to operate on the world stage.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Few banks have navigated turbulent times so well, posting record revenues on the back of strong net inflows and rising markets.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.