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No regional lender comes close to competing with Mashreq Bank for the best digital bank award. Under group chief executive Ahmed Abdelaal and head of corporate and investment banking Joel Van Dusen, the Dubai-based lender has become not just a powerhouse in digital but a leader too. It continues to invest heavily in blockchain. Its Trade Tracker platform allows corporates to track all transactions in real time and to view them all in a single window. TradeFursaa sucks in data from the bank’s business lines, then uses AI and big data to identify opportunities for traders and exporters.

Amid the scramble for cash during the pandemic lockdowns, efficient treasury management was key to ensuring that companies made the most of the liquidity already available to them, minimizing the need for, and cost of, emergency measures. Corporates looked to free up otherwise trapped liquidity through techniques such as cash pooling, either through physical sweeping or – as the imperative to go digital mounts – through virtual accounts.

The financing category offers us three models to consider. Firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley show greater strength in equity than debt. Others, notably Credit Suisse and Deutsche, do interesting and creative things in the debt markets, sometimes with careful use of the balance sheet, but tend to appear less in league tables.

The award for the region’s best bank for corporate responsibility recognizes the holistic commitment to responsible banking of SME lender ProCredit Group.

When Covid began to close in on southeast Asia in 2020, UOB didn’t wait. In February 2020, before any government support and before much of the west had even acknowledged there was a virus to worry about, UOB announced S$3 billion of relief assistance to SME clients.

Citi stands head and shoulders above the competition in Middle East investment banking. The US bank ranked number one in M&A, completing $53.3 billion worth of deals across the awards period, according to Dealogic. It also topped the equity capital market tables, completing 18 deals worth a combined $2.33 billion. It led the way in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel, completing several deals that matter deeply to a region keen to wean itself off oil and gas, and to create truly diversified economies.

A decade of work on reinforcing capital bases, managing bad debts, improving risk management processes and investment in technology paid off for the big regional banking groups in central and eastern Europe (CEE) during the first 12 months of the pandemic.

During Covid-19, providing support to more vulnerable sections of society has been more important than ever. Whether it’s distributing sanitary equipment or providing retailer vouchers through digital means, Kenya Commercial Bank’s KCB Foundation has stepped up to that challenge. This help, moreover, has come on the back of older initiatives that the foundation has developed over time.

In February 2020 BofA Securities reorganized its corporate and investment banking teams in Latin America, with Augusto Urmeneta becoming head of corporate and investment banking. At that time Hans Lin, head of Brazil investment banking – a key market for the bank and one in which it has excelled – joined the bank’s global private capital council. Meanwhile Bruno Saraiva was named co-head of Brazil investment banking alongside Lin, who remains in charge of the ECM team.

Evercore is comfortably the leader among the independent advisory firms, but its performance in the pandemic year also showed that it is a real competitor to the bulge bracket banks – and without the balance sheet that they have to wield. This year it wins Euromoney’s award for North America’s best bank for advisory.

The region's best banks, country by country

The region's best banks, country by country