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This year’s best bank award recognizes Erste Group’s achievements in completing the protracted restructuring of its network and positioning itself to take advantage of growth opportunities in the region, while at the same time meeting the challenges of technology.

Success in emerging markets demands nimble risk management and deep knowledge. CIB has demonstrated that it has both.

Citi was knocked off the top spot in DCM in emerging Europe last year but remains a dominant force in CEE investment banking thanks to its unrivalled on-the-ground presence in the region. The US house has commercial banking operations in Russia, Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic, as well as offices in Turkey, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria and Slovakia. These are coordinated with a 22-strong team in Citi’s CEE banking hub in London. Citi is the winner of our award for the best bank for financing in the region.

The award for best bank for wealth management in Africa this year goes to Standard Bank. With R79 billion ($6.14 billion) in wealth and investment assets under advisory, Standard Bank is Africa’s largest wealth manager.

In a year when the geopolitical environment and the outlook for interest rates took several dramatic turns, investment banks with strength in fixed income and deep local understanding were at an advantage in our award for best bank for markets.

Investment bankers covering CEE breathed a sigh of relief last year as their market sprang back to life after two years in the doldrums. Eurobond sales from the region rose nearly 60% in the 12 months to March from a year earlier, according to Dealogic, while primary equity issuance more than trebled. The trend was less marked in M&A, which had proved more resilient during the regional downturn, but a 28% increase in transaction volumes was nonetheless welcome.

The best bank transformation of the year award goes to Santander Brasil.

From challenging views on diversity in advertising to increasing productivity through homeworking initiatives, Lloyds is changing the way the corporations and society tackle D&I.

The narrative in the Albanian banking sector was unchanged last year as Banka Kombetare Tregtare (BKT) continued to assert its dominance over former market leader Raiffeisen Bank. By the end of December, the Turkish-owned lender accounted for more than a quarter of all deposits in the country and nearly 22% of overall loans, while its Austrian rival saw its share of both markets slip to below 20%.

This year’s award for best bank for markets in CEE goes to Wood & Co, the region’s leading independent investment bank. Founded in Prague in 1991, the firm has since expanded to cover the whole of emerging Europe.

The recent trend for growth among local pan-regional banks continues and, in the last year, Grupo Financiero Ficohsa’s acquisition of Citi’s banks in Honduras and Nicaragua shows that it may well be a challenger in the future for BAC International Bank, which retains this year’s award for the best bank in central America and the Caribbean.

Worsening conditions in the energy and commodity sectors were not enough to unsettle RBC Capital Markets in its continued dominance of the Canadian investment banking landscape, for which it again wins Euromoney’s best investment bank in Canada award. Cross-border work continues to be a big theme, with highlights including advising Enbridge on its $43.4 billion merger with Spectra Energy of the US, the largest ever acquisition by a Canadian firm, completed in March 2017. Smaller, but arguably more eye-catching for the way in which it showcased the bank’s ability to act across asset classes when needed, was its financing work for the $13 billion acquisition of Columbia Pipeline Group by TransCanada Pipelines.