Best bank - ABN Amro
Best debt house - ABN Amro
Best equities house - ABN Amro
Best M&A house - ABN Amro
Best local partner - Dexia Securities via Kempen & Co corporate finance
ABN Amro is indisputably the best bank in the Netherlands. Its expertise across the range of investment banking products is clear from the fact that it sweeps the board for Dutch product awards this year, with huge market shares in both debt and M&A.
ABN's business is divided into a consumer and commercial clients division, private clients and asset management and wholesale clients. It has also developed an excellent cash management platform, which helped to produce a respectable 22.6% return on equity for the bank in 2002.
Continuing the trend for domestic banks to dominate their home debt markets, ABN Amro wins the award for best debt house in the Netherlands. It takes a share of over 16% of the market compared with the 10% of its closest rival, Barclays Capital. In the corporate market, Morgan Stanley has been busy this year but despite this does not manage the same breadth and variety of issuers as ABN.
The Dutch bank has worked with all of the leading Netherlands-based companies this year from Akzo Nobel, VNU and KPN to Shell and Unilever.