 Awards for Excellence 2010 |
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| Best Global sovereign advisor: HSBC | |
| Also nominated: Lazard and Rothschild |
HSBC decided 18 months ago to pull together various of its advisory, FIG and capital markets bankers into a dedicated team covering sovereigns. HSBC wins the accolade as best sovereign adviser this year for its work on a diverse set of transactions and strategic issues facing governments.
In June 2009, HSBC was appointed sole financial adviser to the Irish National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) in relation to establishing the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), which was set up to take on banks’ problem assets, including property development loans and land.
Mark Stadler, global co-head of the FIG group at HSBC, recalls: "There was some market scepticism at the outset that this would be a whitewash and that the discounts on transferred assets would favour the banks and borrowers. Our advice was that Nama had to conduct these transfers with a rigour that truly addressed the problem. Much of the Irish banking system had lost control of the credit process and suffered from a loss of capacity in assessing credit and risk.