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Awards of Excellence

Awards of Excellence

Awards of Excellence

BankTuranAlem’s expansion in the CIS region in the past 12 months has been impressive, through organic growth and acquisitions. In the first four months of 2007 alone, BTA’s assets grew 18.5% to $19.4 billion. The main driver of this asset growth was the loan portfolio, which grew 66.5%. In turn, income had nearly doubled in the first quarter of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006. At the end of 2006, BTA outlined plans to raise $3 billion through bond issuance and syndicated loans. So far, $1.5 billion has been raised, of which $500 million came from a syndicated loan. In the past 12 months there have been many acquisitions across the CIS region. In December 2006, BTA completed the acquisition of a majority stake in the Kazakh bank Temirbank and, at the turn of the year, it purchased a 34% stake in Turkey’s Sekerbank, which brought BTA to a total of 11 banking partners in the CIS countries and Turkey, and made it the largest banking group in the CIS.

Standard Chartered claims a unique focus on Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It’s a justified boast, particularly now that the bank is exploring linkages between these regions as well as expanding in individual countries.

Awards of Excellence

Awards of Excellence

Awards of Excellence

The three major banking groups in the Nordic and Baltic regions – Danske Bank, Nordea and SEB – have substantially different profiles. Danske Bank is the largest by assets and enjoyed strong asset growth of 12.64% in the year to the end of March 2007, returning a respectable – though not overwhelming – 15.96% on equity over the period. In contrast, Nordea, which has similarly sized assets, grew them by just 6.56% but returned an impressive 22.31% on equity. Third-ranked SEB has an impressive 20.36% return on equity but asset growth that at 2.37% can only be considered sluggish given the strong economies of the Nordic and Baltic countries. On balance, Nordea – which has enjoyed extremely swift asset growth in some core markets such as Sweden – deserves to be called the best regional bank group. The approach taken by Iceland’s large banks – Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir – in the years since the banking sector was liberalized at the beginning of the decade can either be seen as dynamic or reckless. Given the turbulence of their share prices it has frequently been described as both. Suffice to say that all have grown rapidly and despite concerns about the speed with which they have bought overseas assets, the underlying strategy of expanding outside the domestic market has proved to be correct in the wake of investor concerns about the strength of the Icelandic economy in early 2006.

UBS Wealth Management is the one truly global private banking business, near the top of the league tables in practically every country.

Awards of Excellence

Awards of Excellence