BEST BANK
Santander Totta
BEST DEBT HOUSE
Citigroup
BEST EQUITY HOUSE
Espírito Santo Investment
BEST M&A HOUSE
JPMorgan
Banco Santander Totta has an impressive record for profitability, efficiency and growth.
Group profits have grown by more than 20% thanks to a rigorous focus on improving customer satisfaction, especially in the retail business. The bank’s initiatives have helped it improve its net margin by 7% and commission income by 21%, and costs have been kept low. The group has the lowest cost-to-income ratio of any leading Portugese bank, and it keeps getting better.
Santander Totta’s return on equity over 2004 was an impressive 19.3% (up from 18.9% the year before) but it excelled again in the first quarter of this year to reach
23.1%.
Citigroup has the leading debt franchise in Portugal, having managed a greater volume of bond deals than even the government itself and twice the volume of its closest competitor, Calyon.
Espírito Santo Investment is the most active broker on Euronext Lisbon and has a strong market position with international institutional investors, as well as domestic institutions and private clients. It has been active in the domestic equity capital markets too, working on all the tender offers of the past year. It also led the rights issue for software company Parerede and has been actively involved in the private placement market.
Morgan Stanley just edges to the top of the M&A league table thanks to its three assignments relating to Electricidade de Portugal’s acquisition of Spanish generating company Hidroeléctrica del Cantábrico.
But it is JPMorgan, which worked on the other side of that deal, that takes the award for best M&A house in Portugal. JPMorgan was sole adviser to Fortis on its €500 million acquisition of a 50% stake in the bancasurance business of Banco Comercial Português, Millennium BCP.
