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Santander Totta is truly in a class of its own in Portugal. In a year when most of its biggest rivals have attracted headlines for all the wrong reasons – losses, intrigue, scandal – Totta has been quietly gaining ground.

While Fortis has been bulking up across the border and in private banking and asset management thanks to some hearty chunks of ABN Amro, KBC has managed reasonable organic growth at home. The bank’s domestic mortgage book grew 10% and it also succeeded in increasing the net interest income of its Belgian retail business by 10% despite a significant shift out of investment funds into deposits.

Despite the turbulence in global financial markets and growing political noise at home, Garanti Bank has continued to exhibit strong growth, which has secured it the best bank award in a fiercely competitive field. Thanks to its strong client focus, the bank secured the top spot in the cash and non-cash lending fields, extending a total of TL50 billion ($40 billion) of loans. Backed by the rapid expansion of its branch network – Garanti opened 105 new branches in 2007 – it attained the highest growth in total deposits, 30%, among its domestic peers and became the sector leader in foreign currency deposits. Garanti is firmly established as Turkey’s leading consumer and mortgage lender. Increased lending at healthy margins fed into a strong bottom line performance, with Garanti delivering the highest growth in net interest income as well as ordinary banking income. In 2007, Garanti more than doubled its net income to TL2.3 billion, giving it a 40% return on equity, almost twice the sector average of 22%. As well as impressing its nearly 6 million retail customers the bank has demonstrated the trust of international investment banks, recently securing a €600 million loan at a tightly priced all-in level of 67.5 basis points over Euribor.

Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) of India often plays second fiddle to its larger rival, ICICI, but over the past year the Mumbai-listed institution has come of age. In acquiring smaller domestic rival Centurion Bank of Punjab for $2.23 billion in February 2008, HDFC stole a march on ICICI, kickstarting a hoped-for and much-needed period of consolidation in India’s cluttered and largely underperforming banking sector. Investors clearly like the lender. HDFC’s Mumbai-listed common stock rose by 2% in the year to end-May 2008 – a solid performance in the midst of a troubled Indian marketplace. By contrast, ICICI’s Mumbai stock sank 17% over the same period. HDFC also posted consolidated net profit up 56% to Rs21.3 billion ($632 million); ICICI’s net profit rose by a rather more meagre 34%. This award is not simply about contrasts, however. HDFC has earned its success through continued, strong, steady, hard work, say analysts and bankers.

With a return on assets of 3.6% and a return on equity of 32.6%, Doha Bank had one of the best performance ratios in the region in 2007. The bank’s development as one of the Middle East’s finest is a result of continuous improvement over a number of years. For example, it has posted a four-fold growth in shareholder equity and a seven-fold increase in annual net profit over the past five years.

Thailand’s political climate is somewhat more settled than when this award was given last year, but rising energy costs and inflation worries mean a tough economic environment. There are positive signs in the banking sector, though, and the winner of this year’s award for best bank, Siam Commercial Bank, has shown strong growth. The bank, the country’s third largest by assets, posted the highest growth rate among Thai banks in 2007, with net profits up 31%. Having raised lending rates in June this year in response to economic concerns, SCB might struggle to repeat a stellar first quarter in which it posted record profits of Bt6.79 billion ($204 million – up 68.7% quarter on quarter), but its performance over the past 12 months has been strong.

The award for best bank in Asia this year goes to Pakistan’s largest lender by market cap, Muslim Commercial Bank. Listed in Karachi and with strong financial links to the Gulf region and southeast Asia, MCB has in recent years transformed itself into one of Asia’s strongest lenders. It’s not the biggest, but it is large, and it is growing fast, particularly in such areas as asset management, retail banking and Islamic finance. Under the watchful eye of its respected founder and chairman, Mian Mohammad Mansha, MCB has become a genuinely powerful lender, the most influential in Pakistan, with revenues rising despite the global credit crunch and a branch network expected to top 1,000 by the end of this year, from 670 a year previously.

Citi

Man Group has bought a 25% stake in alternative investment manager Nephila Capital. The Bermuda-based manager specializes in insurance-based instruments such as catastrophe bonds, weather derivatives and insurance-linked securities.

We could be living through the last days of the independent investment banks.

Barings, Castlepoint, AIG, Eclectica, to name but a few, have all set up agriculture funds in the past 12 months to cash in on expected commodity price increases. And if returns to date are anything to go by, more will be joining them.

As one door closes, another opens. Odey Asset Management closed its $40 million Japan hedge fund in June after it fell more than $1 billion in 18 months. The same month, though, the manager announced that it would be creating a fund of hedge funds subsidiary in order to play out some of its investment theme convictions.