BofA Securities retains the award for Latin America’s best investment bank. Last year, the team, led by Alexandre Bettamio, co-head of global investment banking, and Augusto Urmeneta, president for Latin America and head of Latin America Investment banking, claimed the award for a strong regional performance. This year BofA went even further and took the country awards for Colombia, Peru and Brazil. The latter is easily the most important investment banking market in the region.

With the war in Ukraine adding to global volatility in capital markets, investment banking deal flow was weak in central and eastern Europe during 2022 and early 2023, especially for lower-rated names.

Morgan Stanley swallowed the market whole this year. There was precious little transaction activity that its investment bankers didn’t play a key role in.

In investment banking, Citi continues to benefit from the combination of a leading global network and an on the ground presence in Africa that is much bigger than most other international firms.

BNP Paribas has also had an excellent year in its corporate and institutional banking division, particularly in its home region. The division posted record revenues in 2022, of €16.5 billion, up 16% on the previous year. The equity and prime services, global banking and securities services units all saw new highs, while global markets had its best year since 2009.

Moribund primary equity capital markets and a rising interest rate environment meant that investment banks were tested more than ever in the past 12 months as they sought to give clients the options they needed in spite of poor conditions.

Sometimes a franchise is suited to a moment. And in an awards period that began with the catastrophe unfolding in Ukraine, ended with a meltdown in US regional banking, and was accompanied throughout by eye-watering rate hikes, clients had no shortage of demands of their investment banks.

The most striking thing about this year’s winner of the US best super-regional investment bank award is that PNC Financial Services Group prides itself on not really having an investment bank.

Veteran Morgan Stanley investment bankers describe this as the busiest downturn they have ever seen. That is because they have worked on the biggest and most transformative deals in 12 months of shifting values and at times paralyzing uncertainty. The firm has made some cuts, but its new leaders are shaking the business up and bringing in the talent that will be in demand once markets settle.

In some years this award is a close decision, with two or three banks vying for the prize. This wasn’t one of those years.

Goldman Sachs had a knockout year in Africa. The firm has invested heavily in the region, with a clear focus on a few core markets, notably South Africa, where it has moved to a larger office in Johannesburg and added foreign-exchange and fixed-income products that target corporate and institutional investors. In 2019, it joined forces with Investec to provide domestic equity trading services. A year later, it secured a licence to trade futures from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Last year was one that saw HSBC in its best light in this region. The Middle East is not always an easy place in which to run a full-service investment bank. Some years are stellar; in others the well runs dry. But with energy prices up and governments committed to economic and financial diversification, there has never been a better time to be in the UK lender’s shoes.

BofA Securities has had a busy year in which it demonstrated impressive breadth of deal-flow across countries, as well as regional leadership in two of the main product areas. Not only was the bank the best investment bank in Colombia and Peru, but it was also a close challenger for the Mexican and Brazilian awards. It is this unmatched geographical balance that makes BofA the region’s leading investment bank.

In investment banking, deals were already becoming harder to do in central and eastern Europe before Russia invaded Ukraine, as interest rates began to creep up in the second half of 2021. Executing deals has since become even harder both because of the war and because of those rate rises.

This was, as is the norm, a fight between Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. This year the award changes hands between them and goes to Morgan Stanley for the breadth of its successes.

While it has been a leader for many years in European debt and loan financing, BNP Paribas has in recent years built out its secondary markets businesses. It now includes a full service offering in equities as well as fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) across research, secondary markets, prime services, derivatives and capital markets.

The businesses for which Goldman Sachs is most renowned dominated investment banking last year – but so much else is going on. The firm is enjoying the pay-off from a long effort to expand middle-market coverage and has successfully built a transaction banking platform from scratch that it can now scale up.

Goldman Sachs’s investment bank division excelled during the awards period thanks to a targeted focus on growth sectors such as healthcare, technology and financial sponsor business. This paid off handsomely on its home turf, where the bank dominated the Americas M&A league tables during the awards period, working on 582 deals with a total value of $1.6 trillion for a 30.72% market share. This is slightly ahead of the same period last year where it took 29.52% market share from 408 deals worth $1.15 trillion together.

Truist Securities, the corporate and investment banking division of Truist Financial Corporation, wins Euromoney’s inaugural award for best super-regional investment bank in the US. The award reflects the key role it plays in the domestic financial system, providing critical funding and extending capital-raising services to large corporates and small and medium-sized enterprises.

BMO Capital Markets is Canada’s best investment bank this year, rewarding the momentum that has propelled it up the advisory and equity capital markets league tables while also gaining ground in debt capital markets.

Under the leadership of James Gorman, Morgan Stanley has reshaped its business mix in ways that it thinks will position it for a world in which its clients need more connectivity than ever. Driving that process in its investment bank is co-president Ted Pick.

A barnstorming year in primary equity markets and M&A advisory, combined with consistent and comprehensive debt capital markets coverage, earn Citi the award for the region’s best investment bank.

Many banks could press strong claims to be western Europe’s best investment bank for the first year of Covid – when all issuers desperately needed financing, corporations and sovereigns sought strategic advice and investors required ideas and liquidity to rapidly adjust market exposures.

A strong hold on the foreign currency and fixed income markets in countries such as Nigeria and Kenya proved a vital asset for Standard Bank over the last 12 months, as South Africa suffered particularly damaging Covid-19 lockdowns. Largely because of this regional investment banking structure, coupled with provisioning for credit losses in South Africa, the group made almost twice as much money in the rest of Africa as it did in South Africa in 2020 – highlighting how much Standard Bank is now a pan-African play for investors.

For the first time since 2014, the award for Asia’s best investment bank goes to Goldman Sachs.

Citi stands head and shoulders above the competition in Middle East investment banking. The US bank ranked number one in M&A, completing $53.3 billion worth of deals across the awards period, according to Dealogic. It also topped the equity capital market tables, completing 18 deals worth a combined $2.33 billion. It led the way in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel, completing several deals that matter deeply to a region keen to wean itself off oil and gas, and to create truly diversified economies.

This year BofA Securities, led by Augusto Urmeneta, head of investment banking in Latin America, topped the equity capital markets volume and fee tables across the region, as well as being first in fees and second in terms of volume for M&A.

TD Securities is far from being the biggest investment bank in Canada, but its performance in the awards period saw it post impressive gains in both its investment banking and markets businesses. After many years, it dislodges its bigger rival RBC Capital Markets to win Euromoney’s award for Canada’s best investment bank.

The period of this year’s Euromoney Awards for Excellence, covering almost exactly the complete market cycle of the pandemic, exposed the need for an investment bank franchise to be unusually adaptable if it was to serve clients over that period.

The firm didn’t foresee the coronavirus crisis when it decided to pivot its investment bank more explicitly towards clients than ever before. But as so often, its timing could not have been better

At a time of global economic retrenchment, dollar volatility, slowing trade flows and border closures, Africa needs deeper localization of markets and financing. Standard Bank’s expertise in these fields makes it the clear choice for best investment bank in Africa this year.

Goldman Sachs’s first ever investor day in January 2020 might have left more questions than answers around the firm’s forays into the brave new worlds of consumer and transaction banking. But one thing was unshakeable – its investment bank franchise. This year it is our choice as the US’s best investment bank.

Quantity was never in doubt with Citi – every year, its capital markets team churn out the deals. When it adds quality to the mix, and an ability to innovate, it’s unbeatable.

Western Europe’s best investment bank, BNP Paribas, is increasingly central to capital markets across the continent. That’s been particularly clear since the onset of the coronavirus crisis.

In a transformative year for capital markets in the Middle East, HSBC stands out as the region’s best investment bank, reclaiming the title it last won in 2017.

Until the coronavirus crisis, it was a familiar year for RBC Capital Markets in the awards period. As usual, the bank faced strong individual competitors in almost every business, product or sector in which it operates, but no firm rivals it across the board.

After years of pullback from emerging markets by big Western banks, only two players can now claim to offer truly comprehensive investment banking coverage in CEE.

This year the region’s best investment bank is JPMorgan. In a highly competitive year, the US bank claims the award because of the unrivalled breadth of its mandates across investment banking products, as well as its dominance in many of the region’s countries.

Morgan Stanley has the most balanced investment banking operation in Asia, both geographically and by product. Across M&A, equity and debt capital markets, from Japan via China to southeast Asia, Korea and Australia, the bank is reliably high quality.

This year, the region’s best investment bank is BTG Pactual. It climbed back to leadership in its domestic market and grew strongly elsewhere in the region.

Canada’s investment banking franchises have had a challenging environment to deal with in 2018 and 2019. But RBC Capital Markets has weathered the situation well and is Canada’s best investment bank.

With Russian markets reeling from a fresh bout of sanctions and Turkey suffering extreme currency volatility, investment bankers in CEE were on the back foot last year. As the flow of larger deals slowed to a trickle, the small group of global players still focused on the region struggled to find a market for their services.

If there is one refrain that crops up when some Morgan Stanley executives talk about their business, it is “critical judgement”. It refers to those key moments in a deal when the firm’s advice will be the defining factor in determining success. Time and again in the last year it has got these moments right, making it the US’s best investment bank.

JPMorgan today dominates the global corporate and investment banking landscape. The key to success? A long-term strategy led by group co-president and CIB chief Daniel Pinto, and a management team that keeps the business in a constant state of reinvention.

The shine may have come off emerging markets in recent years, but for those willing to take the risk, there are still excellent opportunities.

In investment banking, the first quarter of this year capped a particularly difficult period in the markets; one that has hit Europe and European firms hardest.

The firm’s clear global leadership today is the result of long-term strategic thinking and sustained and disciplined investment of strong earnings.