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Commercial International Bank wins region’s best bank award; winners reflect year of reform and easing bank liquidity; record year for Gulf debt capital markets sees HSBC retaining investment-banking title, while local and international banks do battle for regional and domestic awards.

As in much of the Gulf, banking conditions in Bahrain were difficult over the last year. Despite these challenges, Ahli United Bank did well.

It was a year of some relief for Middle East banking, as the benefits of reform began to be felt and the oil price recovered. Although they remain partly at the mercy of Opec and the US shale energy industry, there was good news for local and international banks, as the government spending crunch eased up and the region turned to international markets to finance its development projects and budget deficits.

The region’s investment banking market, as ever, remains more tilted to the Gulf, which has recently been less active in blockbuster sovereign wealth-fund M&A mandates and more vigorous in public-sector financing as the lower oil price has bitten.

A list of winners of Euromoney’s Middle East Awards for Excellence 2017, as well as detailed citations for all of the winners, is available here.

Last year’s award for best bank transformation honoured Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait, a bank that showed great ambition by acquiring a financial institution larger than itself – the Egyptian division of Greek bank Piraeus. By so doing it became an international player in Middle Eastern banking.

Confidence in the oil producer is wavering as a bank crisis unfolds.

Itaú buys XP to protect its market share; staggered deal offers XP a certain future away from IPO risks.

Private banks ahead of the curve in terms of provisioning; Banco do Brasil returns to double-digit ROE.

As one of the fastest growing economies in the G20, Indonesia is on the up. Having taken some difficult decisions after coming to power in 2015, Joko Widodo’s administration is reaping the rewards, with growth accelerating, a budget deficit below 3% and inflation tamed. This benign economic background has helped the Indonesian government become one of the most sophisticated sovereign borrowers in the international market. At GlobalCapital ’s roundtable in Jakarta in early April, hosted by Standard Chartered, leading bankers and issuers explored the impact of reforms to state-owned enterprises, potential US interest rate rises and changes to tax laws on the potential to create a deeper, more effective debt market.

Central bank risk, not political risk, should be bond investors’ primary focus.

Takes control of markets unit; builds global structure for banking.