This year Spanish bank BBVA has risen into the top 25 in the Euromoney survey for the first time. Over the past three years, the bank has risen nine places in the overall rankings and more than doubled its volumes.

Who would be a global head of foreign exchange in a market like this? Most of them are spending the vast majority of their days dealing with investigations, rather than thinking strategically about their business or going out to see clients.

The star performers in the Euromoney global FX survey over the past three years are clearly the big-three Australian banks. Each has been beefing up its presence in FX, and since the financial crisis they have also benefited from maintaining high ratings, which has helped them to win business from real-money clients.

The top five global foreign exchange banks have been saying for many years that the banks ranked just outside that top tier are under pressure: they must maintain similar levels of infrastructure in terms of people and technology as the biggest players, but cannot compete on revenues in an ultra-low-margin business.

Facing difficult trading conditions and rising regulatory costs, FX market participants are hoping a rising economy will give business a boost.

For the first time since the merger of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch in 2008, the firm is starting to make serious inroads into the Euromoney FX survey. This year it jumps from 10th to seventh place in the overall rankings, with a market share of 4.38%. But this is not a short-term improvement; over the past three years BofA Merrill’s market share has increased by 1.43 percentage points, and its volumes by almost 90%. And its ambitions are far from sated.

Standard Chartered has shown steady improvement in the survey over the past three years. Its market share has risen 0.31 percentage points, and its volumes by 64%, propelling the bank to 14th place overall in the global rankings.

Citi reclaims top ranking in benchmark Euromoney Foreign Exchange Survey

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Nadir Mahmud smiles at the irony of it. He’s been global head of Citi’s foreign exchange business for only a matter of weeks, and he’s already achieved something that has been a clear ambition of the bank for more than a decade: to reclaim its position as the leading global foreign exchange house.

High US tax rates on funds repatriated by big US multinationals are prompting them to raise debt rather than send money home

The rise in global risk witnessed in 2013 continued during the first quarter of this year as experts taking part in Euromoney’s Country Risk Survey reassessed the investment prospects of EMs versus their developed-country counterparts.

International companies are less likely to invest in India than Iran due to the seemingly more onerous regulatory and tax regime of the world’s largest democracy, according to a pulse survey conducted by Euromoney.

Treasury professionals of companies with combined annual sales of more than $250 billion have voted China, India and Russia as the worst countries to repatriate company funds from, according to Euromoney’s ‘trapped cash’ pulse survey.

Euromoney’s ninth Latin American company ranking is based on a survey of market analysts at banks and research institutes in Latin America. Respondents were asked to nominate the top-five listed companies in each of the main survey categories, bearing in mind market strength, profitability, growth potential, quality of management and earnings. Respondents were also asked to nominate the five best group treasurers, bearing in mind communication, knowledge of own business and market knowledge as well as their top-five financial exchanges in Latin America.

On Thursday evening, 300 private bankers from more than 30 countries attended the Euromoney Private Banking Awards dinner at Plaisterers' Hall in London.

Euromoney’s deals of the year for 2013 show that, despite prolonged periods of market uncertainty, smart issuers and their advisers managed to get some remarkable things done.