Search results for

For banks across the world, the coronavirus pandemic created countless new challenges in servicing clients and many sought answers in the acceleration of their digital development. Over a number of years Citi has been working to improve its digital offerings across all its businesses – work that stood it in good stead to help retail and institutional clients tackle the new environment they faced in 2020.

A barnstorming year in primary equity markets and M&A advisory, combined with consistent and comprehensive debt capital markets coverage, earn Citi the award for the region’s best investment bank.

The region's best banks, country by country

It was yet another impressive year for HSBC in sustainable finance. At a global level the bank is committed to net-zero on carbon emissions. At a regional level it has a team of 39 staff, led by its head of sustainability, Europe and the Middle East, Sabrin Rahman. They engage with clients on ESG, sustainable finance and transition strategies.

UBS performed strongly again in Euromoney’s global private banking and wealth management survey in 2021. It topped the western Europe regional rankings for: best private banking services overall; serving mega high net-worth clients worth more than $250 million; family offices; business owners; and high net-worth clients with $5 million to $30 million to invest.

For small and medium-sized enterprises the year of Covid presented the same challenges as it did to their bigger corporate cousins, only the scale was different. Sometimes they needed help to survive; at other times they need help to thrive.

No other wealth manager comes close to competing with UBS for this award. Again, the Swiss banking giant demonstrated its commitment to the region. During the awards period, it relocated its Dubai office to the heart of the Emirate’s financial district and opened a new wealth management office in Doha. UBS aims to hire about 20 people in Qatar by the end of 2020, but it has already made its biggest personnel move, bringing Tarek Eido from HSBC to oversee its onshore wealth business. Eido will report to head of wealth management, Middle East and Africa, Ali Janoudi.

Transaction services was affected by the pandemic in two significant ways. One was on the cash management side, where there was a forced acceleration of digital initiatives and of their take-up by corporate clients. That was interesting, but by and large it was happening anyway.

Citi wins this award in part because it was so successful in securing a role for itself in the region’s big Spac deals. The US bank completed 11 M&A transactions in the year to the end of March 2021, worth a total of $53.3 billion, according to Dealogic data, for a 37% market share.

Many banks could press strong claims to be western Europe’s best investment bank for the first year of Covid – when all issuers desperately needed financing, corporations and sovereigns sought strategic advice and investors required ideas and liquidity to rapidly adjust market exposures.

At the end of the first quarter of 2021, UBS’s Americas wealth management unit had more than $1.6 trillion in invested assets, up 34% on the previous year, a record for the firm. In a client satisfaction survey over the 12-month period of these awards, the bank scored 9.6 out of 10, based on 35,000 responses. And the division made a profit of $1.45 billion, another record.

Sustainable finance is rapidly gaining traction in the Turkish banking sector, with Akbank, Isbank, Vakifbank and Ziraat Bank all issuing ESG-labelled bonds in the year to the end of March.