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The US Fed’s journey to balance sheet normalization might not be as steady as many have assumed as inflation stubbornly refuses to play its part.

Spreads at multi-year lows as demand remains buoyant; Investors reverse underweight positions.

Morocco’s Banque Centrale Populaire has entered into negotiations with Bank of Kigali to acquire a minority stake in the Rwandan bank.

In the spirit of summer supplements, here is Euromoney’s must-have guide to some of the main winners and losers of the past year in central and eastern Europe.

Bank’s IB division up to third in rankings in first half of 2017; IB head Leao says there is “still a lot more to come”.

The pioneering fintech lender has grown fast by offering much needed working capital in hours – rather than weeks – to small business customers poorly served by the banks. But now the banks want their share of iwoca.

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There are two priorities at OCBC: wealth management, through the Bank of Singapore subsidiary; and small and medium-sized enterprises. All banks in Asia like to say they prioritize SME banking, but at OCBC it is clearly instrumental to everything the bank does – and that makes it our best bank for SMEs in Asia. Since last year, OCBC has allied its early-stage persistence – everyone who registers a new business in Singapore is contacted almost immediately by the bank with an offer of assistance – with the use of big-data analytics. This can be as simple as analyzing trends among people who register new businesses, or refining an online campaign through the customized use of search engine keywords. For its flagship small business accounts, OCBC believes it has increased its number of leads by 180% and its conversion from 40% to over 50% through these techniques.

Few banks in the world have made greater efforts to reach those in poverty than State Bank of India (SBI). As chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya told Euromoney last year: “I have customers in the bank who have to be led by the hand to give their left thumb impression. When you dispense the money, you have to tell them the amount orally, because they can neither read nor write.”

There is an important changing of the guard for the best bank for markets award, reflecting a rapid and big improvement. In previous years, Bank of America Merrill Lynch would have been at the periphery of a conversation on Asia-Pacific markets. Now it is front and centre. The most obvious thing BAML has going for it is diversity. Whereas the usual contenders in this category, Citi and HSBC, are heavy on forex and rates but are trying to bolster equities from a relatively low base (Morgan Stanley is the reverse), BAML is already diversified, with equities businesses accounting for 40% of global markets revenues in 2016 and FICC (fixed income, currencies and commodities) 60%. That FICC figure is roughly equally split between emerging and developed markets. Global rates, credit and foreign exchange are all well represented.

Morgan Stanley dominated M&A league tables during our review period, but winning the best bank for advisory award is about more than scale. What is more impressive is the way Morgan Stanley has put itself at the heart of the central trends of Asia-Pacific M&A, usually getting itself on to the lucrative sell side along the way.

The best bank for financing award will surprise those who set great store in league tables – but maybe they have been looking at the wrong league tables. While Credit Suisse is not a leader in volume terms, and in some areas is far from it, Dealogic data show that it is one of the most profitable houses across investment banking. In fact during the awards period, if Australia is added to ex-Japan Asia, no house made more from public deals in the region.