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A merger over a decade ago created what is in 2018 the Middle East’s best bank, Emirates NBD. In 2017, another merger created the region’s biggest bank. So far, the signs suggest FAB will be successful. But in 2018, the bank that wins best bank transformation is Commercial International Bank (CIB). CIB has made an impressive shift over the last decade and a half from its origins as a relatively small corporate-focused bank towards a sustainably profitable institution that offers international investors exposure to the Egyptian consumer story. Hisham Ezz Al Arab has been chairman and managing director throughout this period.

A rebound in equity issuance and the continued rise – from a high base – in DCM issuance, helped offset lower regional M&A volumes last year, as international yield hunters helped sovereigns and government-related entities offset the decline in petro-dollar flows.

Wealth management remains a hotly contested field in Middle Eastern banking, especially as an ever-larger number of banks strive to enter Saudi Arabia, one of the most exciting markets in the region thanks to its many high net-worth individuals and growing openness to foreign financial institutions.

Banks globally are increasingly aware of the need for a heightened sense of corporate social responsibility. Institutions in the Middle East are no exception.

Bahrain Best Bank

Advisory work in the Middle East has shifted away from big-ticket international M&A buy-outs towards helping governments implement their longer-term plans and financing strategies and helping regional corporates restructure their business models and liabilities in an era of lower growth and (perhaps) higher interest rates. Having set up a Dubai office in 2010, now under Rami Touma, Moelis & Co has emerged as preeminent in this new model of regional advisory. It is the region’s best advisory house in 2018.

Middle East investment banking volumes saw a tentative rebound in 2017, after a drop in 2016, suggesting that regional reform is already producing opportunities for deal makers, after the demise of the international sovereign buy-outs of the oil-boom era.

CFOs, Treasurers and funding officials need liquid and diversified sources of funding at the best of times, and even more so in a rising interest rate environment. China's bond market, the third largest in the world, has begun opening up to foreign issuers over the past few years. In the coming months, more new issuers are expected to enter the market as they look for funding sources that match their requirements, in a currency that is rapidly internationalizing.

Appetite for acquisitions in the outperforming economies of emerging Europe is booming, despite political concerns. Deal flow remains concentrated in the mid-market, however, as a shortage of opportunities frustrates would-be big-ticket buyers.

It is one thing to simplify a business plan but quite another to execute it. Nevertheless, Citi appears to be on the verge of making its new simple approach, well, simple.

Banks already have the largest attack surfaces and face the widest range of attackers and attack types of any businesses. Now with their strategies dependent on rapid digital transformation, they are exposing themselves to a potentially existential threat on an ever-expanding cyber battlefield.

With the most complex of supply chains, banks face an almost impossible task in dealing with third-party cybersecurity risk. But one group of counterparties poses a particular problem – law firms that have been slow to react to cyber crime