Awards for Excellence 2014: Best global investment bank

Best global investment bank: Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Cast your mind back five years, to a banking industry still reeling from the after-effects of the sub-prime crisis. Most talk was merely of survival, but occasionally the discussion would turn to which banks would be the winners once the crisis abated. 

You would have struggled to find anyone, certainly externally, and often internally, who would have suggested that the recently rebranded Bank of America Merrill Lynch would count among the potential long-term winners.