Euromoney Awards for Excellence 1996

Euromoney Awards for Excellence 1996

In order to highlight the fullrange of different services in the derivatives market, we have added the category of most innovative derivatives house to complement the best derivatives house and best risk adviser awards. Secondary market equity activity is often overlooked in awards such as these. This year we have changed this by giving an award to the institution we consider to be the best international brokerage firm.

The whole area of debt and equity research is changing and it will be fascinating to see which of the two main approaches - local market research or global sectoral research - will out. This year, Euromoney is inaugurating two new awards for research: best international equity research house and best emerging markets research house.

By contrast, a number of categories have been suspended. For instance, over the period between last year's and this year's awards, there were only two dozen or so international equity issues in the emerging markets. That meant it was almost impossible to gauge how well each institution did in that category. With so many deals in the pipeline, though, the category willbe reinstated next year. For the same reason, the category of privatization adviser has also been put on hold for the year, and the most dominant firmin a sector or niche may re-emerge in 1997.

We strive to make the Euromoney Awards for Excellence the definitive guide to which banks are best in different areas of the global capital markets.

The decision-making process for the awards was exhaustive. Our editors drew up a shortlist of candidates in each category based on league tables, the banks' profitability, our own polls and our journalists' market soundings.

We tried to maintain our standards for fairness and accuracy by asking candidates nominated in the overall awards to provide us with a brief synopsis of their strengths in the chosen categories. Editor Garry Evans and contributing editor Katharine Morton then conducted meetings with as many people shortlisted as possible. In a one-month period, they met with more than 120 people in three countries. These meetings paid close attention to each firm's qualities, managerial structure, focus, ability to innovate as well as profitability and positioning among peers.

The shortlist has deliberately been kept tighter than in previous years.The new category of "top tier" reflects our belief that, in certain categories, there is a first division of very high quality players thathave missed achieving the highest award by a whisker or that have risen into the first league over the past year. At the same time, we have retained the "one to watch" tag for firms that are outside our shortlistsbut which we believe stand a good chance of making the grade. The final decisions were then made by a committee of Euromoney's senior editors.

Once again Citibank flourished in the awards. Its strategy of concentratingon corporate and emerging markets business has become more finely tuned over the past year. Other winners include SBC Warburg, whose merger hassettled in rapidly; and Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, which are very difficult to chose between in terms of quality and global reach. Chase has also made a dent on the awards; although clearly it will take a while to gauge whether the Chemical merger has given the firm a one-off boost or a real push up to a new level. We will be surprised if the firm doesn't win more awards next year.