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LATEST ARTICLES
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JPMorgan recorded a hat-trick in the liquidity rankings, but it was all change in many other areas of this year’s Euromoney FX poll.
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Equity Bank has been involved in healthcare provision in Kenya since 2015, when it established Equity Afia as an integrated, scalable and sustainable healthcare delivery model through its nonprofit foundation.
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Few banks have undergone as great a transformation over the last four years as PrivatBank. In December 2016, when it was taken over by the state, Ukraine’s biggest bank held more than a third of the country’s retail deposits and boasted 20 million customers.
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A great deal of resources have been dedicated to small and medium enterprises in Saudi Arabia as the kingdom looks to increase SME’s contribution to GDP from 20% to 35% under its Vision 2030 programme.
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Singapore’s banks have dominated this award in recent years and for good reason. The super-stable city state boasts a trio of excellent lenders, all geared toward helping its army of small and medium-sized enterprises flourish.
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As the Middle East enters a new phase of development, one in which governments can no longer rely on endless petrodollars and in which economies built on global trade and travel will have to adapt to survive, it will need banks with outstanding M&A and advisory capabilities. Citi is such a bank.
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The best bank for financing in the region is Goldman Sachs.
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In September 2019 Garanti BBVA signed the world’s first gender loan, a newly designed structure that the bank hopes will encourage its customers to improve their gender equality performance.
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Year after year, HSBC quietly gets on with the key business of delivering crucial funding to clients whether they are looking to refinance debt, acquire an asset or rival, or just bulk up their balance sheet in the face of a once-in-a-century global pandemic.
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First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) developed its sustainability framework in 2017 under four pillars: sustainable banking, being a responsible employer, having a positive social impact and excellence in governance, integrity and risk management.
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When the Covid-19 pandemic reached Qatar and foreign exchange houses were forced to close, a customer contacted Commercial Bank of Qatar (CB) with concerns that his domestic workers were no longer able to send critical remittance payments to families in their home countries.
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At a time of global economic retrenchment, dollar volatility, slowing trade flows and border closures, Africa needs deeper localization of markets and financing. Standard Bank’s expertise in these fields makes it the clear choice for best investment bank in Africa this year.
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Standard Bank’s investment in switching its trade processes from manual to digital has paid off this year, with faster processes stemming from better technology. It is the best bank for transaction services in Africa as a result. Its head of transactional products and services is Hasan Khan.
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“This pandemic will change a lot of things in terms of how people approach crises in the future,” Martin Mugambi, Citi’s chief executive for Kenya and east Africa, tells Euromoney.
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Credit Suisse wins the award for Latin America’s best bank for wealth management.
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Latin America’s best bank this year is BBVA. The Spanish-headquartered bank has long been vulnerable to competitors’ claims that it was more a federation than an integrated network of subsidiaries, but the bank’s most recent performance shows that the management – overseen by Jorge Sáenz-Azcúnaga, head of country monitoring at BBVA – has addressed this weakness.
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Kenya’s Equity Bank stands out as a modern financial institution, a domestic champion and a regional player. As a result, it receives this year’s award for Africa’s best bank.
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It isn’t easy being a very big bank with a very big presence in very big markets. Citi is a big financial institution present in virtually every large Asian economy. You don’t get to be this size and to last this long without an innate ability to react smartly and nimbly to systemic threats.
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As the biggest retail bank in a country where cash usage is lower than other big European states and where cloud-based neobanks have particular traction, Lloyds Banking Group faces an unusual digital banking challenge.
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“I think this crisis has shown why being with a firm focused on wealth management as a primary business and having a global perspective matters to clients,” says Tom Naratil, co-chief executive of UBS global wealth management (GWM) and president of UBS Americas.
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Tight labour markets and low interest rates put a floor under credit demand across central and eastern Europe last year and mitigated the effects on banking sectors of slowing economic growth, regulatory curbs on consumer lending and proliferating sectoral levies.
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Societe Generale has long been active in promoting finance for small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the move towards cashless economies as governments advise against the use of cash because of its role as a vector for the virus. That has left many financial institutions scrambling to upgrade their systems.
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Over the past decade Poland’s banks have consistently been at the head of the pack in Europe in terms of digitalization.
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When Euromoney met the head of retail banking at Ping An Bank, Xinfa Cai, in September 2019, he talked of his desire to hear his employer mentioned, in terms of its dedication to innovation and service, in the same breath as the likes Taobao and JD.com, two of China’s biggest and best digitally driven corporates.
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HSBC retains its title as the Middle East’s best bank for transaction services for the second year running by stepping up to the challenge of helping customers trade and transact at a time of closed borders and supply-chain disruption.
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While it was hard before, the Covid-19 pandemic will make it almost impossible for most European banks to earn their cost of equity any time soon.
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Western Europe’s best investment bank, BNP Paribas, is increasingly central to capital markets across the continent. That’s been particularly clear since the onset of the coronavirus crisis.
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To the detractors of big Wall Street banks, Goldman Sachs might not seem an obvious candidate for recognition of its response to a humanitarian crisis. But when the Covid-19 crisis struck, the bank rapidly deployed a raft of measures spanning frontline support for hospitals to online versions of its community volunteering programmes.
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Prime Bank has barely paused during the Covid-19 crisis. The Dhaka-based bank was an early mover on coronavirus in south Asia, raising awareness of the pandemic among employees as early as January 30.
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Businesses and banks in Belarus have faced a particularly tough challenge during the Covid-19 crisis due to the refusal of the government not only to impose any national restrictions but also to acknowledge the risks of the pandemic and implement any measures to mitigate its economic impact.
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Keeping supply chains functioning is essential for the success of CEE’s open, globally connected economies, and the banks best-placed to do so are those that combine deep local knowledge with international expertise.
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Santander is Latin America’s best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises. Many banks have SME offerings but few, if any, use the segment so effectively as one of the fundamental drivers of its growth.
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The London-headquartered lender has its roots and its future in Asia, and from the outset it was keen to provide staunch support to its customers across the region. It has been everywhere throughout the Covid-19 crisis, playing, in the words of chief executive Noel Quinn, a “massive role” in supporting communities and helping restore economic growth.
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Canada’s biggest bank is a regular winner of the award for Canada’s best investment bank, but in 2020 it has clocked up another accolade for the first time since 2004.
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Banking small and medium-sized enterprises is challenging in any market, particularly at the smaller end of the scale. It is even more so in Turkey, where the market is distorted by the predominance of large state-owned banks focused more on pumping up the economy with cheap credit than on commercial imperatives.
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HSBC has been central to maintaining imports of vital goods into the region, even while national borders slammed shut.
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The vital role for UK corporate clients played by Barclays was clearer than ever during the coronavirus crisis: the bank arranged £9.9 billion of commercial paper issuance under the Bank of England’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility, almost half of the total.
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The coordination of the financial response to the coronavirus crisis has sometimes seemed easier in France than elsewhere in Europe.
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This year Vision Banco wins the award for Latin America’s best bank for corporate responsibility.
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Under the stewardship of chief executive Jean-Christophe Durand, formerly head of BNP Paribas’s Middle East and Africa operations, National Bank of Bahrain (NBB) embarked on a radical transformation programme in 2017 that delivered impressive results during the awards period.
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“During the first quarter our assets increased by 15% due to net new money, transaction revenues are up year over year 55%, our lending share has grown 25% compared to a year ago and our costs are down 1%,” says Ali Janoudi, head of Middle East and Africa for wealth management at UBS.
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Cyprus’s strict approach to tackling the coronavirus has meant the health crisis has been much less severe there than in many other states in Europe.
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“People think the role of a bank is giving money, but actually what a bank does is build systems,” says Carl Manlan, chief operating officer of the Ecobank Foundation.
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As of late June 2020, Citi, together with its charitable Citi Foundation, had committed some $100 million to Covid-19 relief efforts. While the targets of its aid are varied, the bank has made a special focus on supporting people and communities of colour, recognizing the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on these communities.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented change to the way that business is carried out in Africa. For those banks central to supply-chain management and trade finance, the need to maintain the flow of food, essential goods and personal protection equipment despite border closures is critical.
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There is fierce competition in sustainable finance in Western Europe, but this year one bank stands out for its commitment across all the sectors and countries in which it operates and for its work on ensuring the needs of both environment and society are addressed.
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DBS takes the award for Asia’s best bank for transaction services this year.
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Early on in the coronavirus crisis, Credit Suisse’s senior management was instrumental in the design and implementation of Switzerland’s scheme of government-guaranteed loans. The scheme was so successful that other countries later moved to bring their programmes in line with it.
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Across sustainable finance and microfinance, BBVA is working to support greener and more inclusive economies. It wins the award for best bank in Latin America for sustainable finance.
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Societe Generale’s footprint in CEE has changed dramatically over the last four years. At the start of 2016, the French group had one of the largest banking networks in the region, covering 13 countries from Albania to Georgia.
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CaixaBank’s response to the coronavirus crisis started with a recognition of the vital role of its physical network, which reaches more small and isolated communities than any other bank in Spain.
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First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) is the number one bank for loans in the Mena region, with a 15.5% market share, arranging some 160 transactions including $5 billion of syndicated loans from April 2019 to March 2020. But it has also won numerous debt capital markets mandates across the region.
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Deutsche Bank’s commitment to Africa’s economic development began long before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, but the bank’s expertise in infrastructure and structured finance will be essential in supporting the continent’s recovery and in helping to address the long-term concerns holding back development.
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The list of deals from 2019 and 2020 – green bonds, social bonds, sustainability bonds and ESG-linked loans – goes on and on for HSBC in Asia under Jonathan Drew, managing director, sustainable finance.
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Banreservas responded to the national state of emergency brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic by working closely with the Dominican Republic’s authorities and the central bank to keep the banking system liquid and avoid corporate insolvencies.
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Scotiabank Chile wins the award for the region’s best bank transformation.
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Santander has been one of the most innovative groups in the world in its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, and its Polish subsidiary is no exception.
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There’s practically nothing that a North American small to medium-sized enterprise might want to do that Bank of America won’t be able to help with. Its strategy, built around six service areas, has been enduringly constant for five years, and it again wins the award for North America’s best bank for SMEs.
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Emirates NBD has excelled in all elements of its response to the Covid-19 pandemic, from steps taken to protect the health of its employees to loan deferrals for its customers; but what really stands out is the bank’s commitment to its community.
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The Covid-19 crisis has emphasized the importance of banks that can stand by their clients and bring them funding in the toughest times. Euromoney’s best bank for financing in Western Europe, BNP Paribas, has stepped up to a greater extent than peers, especially on a pan-European level – although its achievements this year go beyond the coronavirus response.
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The pandemic and following market crisis during 2020 has seen many high net-worth individuals across central and eastern Europe return to the safety and security of large international banks. Among those benefiting from this flight to safety has been Credit Suisse, which has seen increases in net new assets over the first few months of the year.
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With lockdowns shuttering businesses across the continent, commitment to banking small and medium-sized enterprises has taken on even greater economic and social importance this year.
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Citi has the largest presence of any global bank in Africa – active in over 40 countries, with offices in 16 of those. The bank excels at capacity building and innovation, working with a vast array of partnerships with government, government agencies, fintechs, local financial institutions, consumer goods companies, social enterprises and nonprofits.
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It’s hard to find a more comprehensive and cutting-edge offering in wealth management across Africa than that of Standard Bank, which is why the bank wins the award for best bank for wealth management in Africa once again.
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When Singapore suffered a second spike in coronavirus cases in April, attention turned to the city state’s migrant labourers, an army of essential workers described by a former head of the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health as society’s “most invisible” members.
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Under the leadership of chief executive Rodolfo Tabash, BAC International has developed a regional response to the Covid-19 crisis, bringing together a multi-jurisdictional, multi-disciplinary committee to harmonize its response and ensure best practice is used throughout its Credomatic operations in central America.
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As the sixth-largest bank in North America by branches, TD Bank Group penetrates deep into the Canadian and US markets. It deployed massive support to retail and corporate clients in both countries as the coronavirus crisis took hold.
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In a region where the greatest amount of wealth is in the hands of entrepreneurs, it is a ‘bank for entrepreneurs’ that many of those wealthy individuals need and that is Credit Suisse. It wins the award this year for Asia’s best bank for wealth management.
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Since joining Habib Bank in early 2018 as president and chief executive, former JPMorgan banker Muhammad Aurangzeb has transformed the Pakistan-based lender from the ground up.
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The best digital bank award goes to Banco Inter, which has pulled off the difficult feat of keeping both its investors happy following its 2018 IPO – as it matures from a rapid growth story – and its clients.
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Goldman Sachs’s first ever investor day in January 2020 might have left more questions than answers around the firm’s forays into the brave new worlds of consumer and transaction banking. But one thing was unshakeable – its investment bank franchise. This year it is our choice as the US’s best investment bank.
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It is hard to find a bank with greater integrity than DBS. Its commitment to responsible banking, sustainable finance, running a responsible business and creating social impact are obvious; and this year it wins the award for Asia’s best bank for corporate responsibility.
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The North American mergers and acquisitions advisory business has one obvious volume leader most years. This year is no different, but that doesn’t mean nothing else changes.
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Kazakhstan’s banks faced a difficult challenge in the first two months of the pandemic. When president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced a state of emergency on March 16, he also unveiled plans to provide a support payment of KT42,500 ($106) to all citizens economically affected by the pandemic.
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Another brisk year of M&A deal flow in CEE produced a clear winner on the advisory side. The best bank for advisory, Citi, dominated Dealogic’s league tables for the 12 months to the end of March, acting on 17 deals worth $17.7 billion, versus just $9.5 billion for its nearest rival.
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Quantity was never in doubt with Citi – every year, its capital markets team churn out the deals. When it adds quality to the mix, and an ability to innovate, it’s unbeatable.
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It was a year of milestones for Morgan Stanley in sustainability, a journey that began in 2013 with the establishment of the Sustainable Investing Institute under Audrey Choi, the bank’s chief sustainability officer.
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DBS is a bank at the top of its game. For the second year in a row, it not only wins the best bank in Asia award but canters away with it at high speed.
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BNP Paribas has sustainability and inclusiveness at its heart, as shown in its approach to all of its stakeholders. This year the bank wins the award for the region’s best bank for corporate responsibility.
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After years of pullback from emerging markets by big Western banks, only two players can now claim to offer truly comprehensive investment banking coverage in CEE.
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Ghana’s banking sector went through severe challenges in 2018 after the central bank’s asset quality review in 2017 revealed several structural challenges, including poor corporate governance, poor risk-management practices and regulatory non-compliance.
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Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are the backbone of the Nigerian economy. A survey carried out in 2018 by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics estimated there are over 41 million firms with 199 employees or fewer in Nigeria, accounting for almost 50% of GDP. MSMEs provide almost 60 million jobs, equal to 86% of the national workforce.
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After much restructuring in 2019 that saw the de-layering of management, regionalization of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and streamlining of client segments, it wasn’t clear what the beginning of 2020 might look like for UBS in Western Europe.
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Center-Invest Bank became the first Russian bank to issue a green bond with its R250 million ($3.56 million) offering in November last year. It was a natural step for a bank that has been committed to the environment and responsible banking from its inception.
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Supported by helpful regulators, many Asian lenders adapted well to the pandemic. Hong Leong Bank (HLB) was no exception. The Kuala Lumpur-based lender donated to local NGOs and delivered food parcels to the needy during Ramadan.
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Bank of America is the undisputed leader in transaction services in North America. Long before the coronavirus crisis struck its home market, the bank had entered the Euromoney awards period with strong momentum. But by the end of that period it was being called upon to deploy all its leadership to help businesses across the US.
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Standard Chartered’s contribution to the development of African markets this year was shown in several transformational infrastructure deals, including Tanzania’s light railway and a huge offshore oil drilling rig in Angola. This contribution makes it Euromoney’s best bank for financing in Africa.
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Until the coronavirus crisis, it was a familiar year for RBC Capital Markets in the awards period. As usual, the bank faced strong individual competitors in almost every business, product or sector in which it operates, but no firm rivals it across the board.
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Kenya’s Equity Bank stands out for its digital offering, and is poised to take advantage of the coronavirus-fuelled pivot towards cashless banking.
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If there is one thing that will test a bank’s digital and technology platform it is a global pandemic. The investment that Bank of America has put into all of its digital offerings over the last few years became truly apparent over the first few months of 2020; and it wins the award for North America’s best digital bank.
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Banking is evolving in Saudi Arabia – the Gulf’s largest economy – with government and regulatory initiatives boosting growth in the sector.
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Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) play a unique role in the US, but they were not included in the earliest Covid-19 stimulus packages. So it was vital that big banks helped them to reach those that needed loans the most.
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Citi worked hard to mitigate the effects of the pandemic throughout central and Latin America and, given its history and geographical spread throughout the region, its impact was widespread.
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The Covid-19 pandemic destroyed many of the assumptions underpinning M&A deals under preparation before the outbreak. Therefore it has been vital for advisory banks to shift focus to help clients understand and manage the situation. Much of that is about having built up a well-rounded franchise.
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The Middle East is a hard market in which to be truly sustainable, given the vast amount of money in the region that is tied to oil now and will be for some time.
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To succeed, you have to be national: for Bill Demchak, chief executive of PNC Financial Services, it’s the mantra that has guided his strategy since taking over the reins of the firm in 2013.
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With Africa and the world expected to enter a protracted period of low growth, more companies will need to restructure and M&A will become a more dominant trend in the region. Over the last 12 months, Citi has demonstrated its expertise in these fields in Africa and it is Euromoney’s best bank for advisory in Africa this year.
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No investment bank has a greater reach in central America and the Caribbean region than Citi.
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The 2020 award for the best bank for advisory goes to BR Partners. It is an outstanding growth story: the investment bank boutique was opened just 10 years ago by founder and chief executive Ricardo Lacerda, previously of Citi and Goldman Sachs in Brazil.
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What CB Bank did right in the early days of Covid-19 was to recognize that the main pressure facing its customers was a shortage of cash.
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Clients of transactions services want simplicity and speed, neither of which is easy for companies operating in regulatory cumbersome and often tech-light jurisdictions of Latin America.
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Many of the small countries that make up the central American and Caribbean region are dependent on tourism for income. They will likely be hard hit this year.
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Morgan Stanley rarely seems to put a foot wrong in Asia. As ever, it seemed to be everywhere last year, a key player on the deals that mattered most.
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In November 2019, AbbVie priced a $30 billion, 10-tranche bond that was the fourth-largest corporate bond ever. The trade, which backed AbbVie’s acquisition of Allergan, wrapped up an extraordinary financing package by Morgan Stanley.
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When a big US bank joins its peers around the world under an umbrella of responsible banking, it lifts the entire responsibility agenda – and this is exactly what Citi has done as an early signatory to the Principles of Responsible Banking (PRB) of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.
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One of the first things Nigeria’s Guaranty Trust Bank did with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic was to get in touch with local authorities to see how the bank could help. Recognizing that the fragile public healthcare system would struggle to cope with the predicted number of patients, it offered to set up a care facility for people with Covid-19.
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As Spain became one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus, Spanish banks were quick to pledge financial support for small and medium-sized enterprises.
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This year the region’s best investment bank is JPMorgan. In a highly competitive year, the US bank claims the award because of the unrivalled breadth of its mandates across investment banking products, as well as its dominance in many of the region’s countries.
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In a transformative year for capital markets in the Middle East, HSBC stands out as the region’s best investment bank, reclaiming the title it last won in 2017.
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Euromoney will ask investors to nominate their top three credit research providers across a range of sectors and borrower types.
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As 2014 came to an end Euromoney Research Group asked corporate funding officials for their views on key topics affecting companies in Central and Eastern Europe. From the fraught situation in Ukraine to plans for seeking international credit ratings, find the exclusive results of the survey here.
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Sub-Saharan Africa’s capital markets continue to make up a tiny proportion of overall global investment banking activity. Investment banking fees for the region in the first eight months of the year totalled less than $200 million, a fraction of a global fee pool of close to $60 billion, according to data from Thomson Reuters.
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When it comes to the difficulties in liquidity management faced by treasurers operating in China, 21.3% say renminbi cash-pooling is top of the list of issues.
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Facing difficult trading conditions and rising regulatory costs, FX market participants are hoping a rising economy will give business a boost.
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High US tax rates on funds repatriated by big US multinationals are prompting them to raise debt rather than send money home
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International companies are less likely to invest in India than Iran due to the seemingly more onerous regulatory and tax regime of the world’s largest democracy, according to a pulse survey conducted by Euromoney.
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Treasury professionals of companies with combined annual sales of more than $250 billion have voted China, India and Russia as the worst countries to repatriate company funds from, according to Euromoney’s ‘trapped cash’ pulse survey.