Brazil

Best bank
Banco Itaú Best debt house
Citigroup

Best M&A house
Goldman Sachs

Best equities house
UBS

Brazil has one of the world?s most interesting and competitive banking markets. The big three private-sector banks ? Bradesco, Itaú and Unibanco ? are all highly sophisticated and extremely profitable. There is also a lot of foreign competition, and even state competition in the form of the increasingly professional Banco do Brasil.

But only one bank, Banco Itaú, managed to report more than $1 billion in profits in 2003.