Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2020 Central and Eastern Europe winners revealed

UniCredit has been named the best bank in Central and Eastern Europe for 2020 in Euromoney’s Awards for Excellence.

Under Team 23, the new four-year strategic plan devised by UniCredit chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier, CEE has been highlighted as one of two ‘growth engines’ – along with CIB – for the Italian group.

The bank has kept its focus firmly on its core corporate and small and medium-sized enterprise clientele in the region, a strategy that is paying off.

“As well as maintaining leading transaction services, advisory and markets franchises, the Italian group has shown consistent appetite for putting its balance sheet to work across the region,” Euromoney said.

UniCredit was also named the best bank for transaction services in the region.

In a year that saw a pickup in capital markets deal flow in the region, particularly on the Eurobond side, JPMorgan easily outpaced its global and European rivals by both number and volume of transactions and was named best investment bank in Central and Eastern Europe this year.

According to Dealogic, the US bank led more than half of all international bond sales in CEE in the 12 months to March, notching a total allocated volume of $11.6 billion.

The best bank for advisory was Citi, which dominated Dealogic’s league tables for the 12 months to the end of March, acting on 17 deals worth $17.7 billion, versus just $9.5 billion for its nearest rival.

Societe Generale won the award for best bank for financing in this region.

In debt capital markets it remained the clear leader among European banks for the number of Eurobond mandates executed in the current awards period, according to Dealogic, and behind only JPMorgan and Citi of the global players.

Much of this deal flow came from leveraging strong relationships with the full spectrum of public-sector, corporate and bank clients in SocGen’s five focus markets.

The best bank for wealth management in Central and Eastern Europe this year was Credit Suisse. The bank benefitted from a broad flight to safety and saw increases in net new assets over the first few months of the year.

ING Bank Slaski was the winner of this year’s award for CEE’s best digital bank, having taken the lead in key areas including e-commerce, remote verification and open banking over the last two years.

The best bank for corporate responsibility this year was Center-Invest Bank, while Garanti BBVA was named the best bank for sustainable finance in CEE.

The award for best bank transformation in the region this year goes to PrivatBank.

About the Awards for Excellence

Euromoney’s Awards for Excellence are the awards that matter to the banks and bankers who matter. They were established in 1992 and were the first of their kind in the global banking industry. This year Euromoney received almost 1,000 submissions from banks in our regional and country awards programme that covers more than 50 regional awards and best bank awards in close to 100 countries. We will be receiving submissions and announcing winners in a further 25 global award categories in our September issue.

To access the results, contact Austin Ou Yang at +44 (0) 20 7779 8531 or austin.ouyang@euromoneyplc.com, or subscribe online.