Political instability in France, coupled with better EU-UK relations, could threaten Paris’ ability to rival London as a financial centre. But a focus on institutional clients among French and other EU banks is already helping London’s resilience – a trend that shows little sign of abating.

Citi saw impressive growth over 2023 with revenue growth of 16% year on year.

OCBC wins the award as Singapore's best digital bank this year for enhancing its digital banking service through a series of initiatives designed to deepen engagement and improve the user experience across its platforms.

For its range of initiatives and substantial investment in supporting social and environmental issues in the special administrative region, Bank of China (Hong Kong) wins the award this year.

Citi secures the award for Korea’s best investment bank in recognition of its comprehensive range of activity across M&A advisory, debt capital markets and equity capital markets.

In 2023, Citi saw operating revenues reach around ¥139 billion ($860 million) and total assets climb to ¥6,097 billion.

Citi saw impressive growth across its corporate banking services in Hong Kong in 2023. It saw year-on-year growth in its loan portfolio and funded several significant environmental, social and governance (ESG) financing transactions.

Newly onboarded corporate customers at HSBC grew by 21% last year. It introduced Smartserve, which reduces the number of days required to open an account, and Omni Collect, which simplifies the way businesses collect payments.

In 2023, HSBC saw its market share of foreign investment into Malaysia reach 30% of total assets under management, making it the leading custodian and clearing bank for foreign institutional investors investing in country’s capital markets. HSBCnet Get Rate, which provides its Malaysian customers with automatic preferential FX rates, was upgraded to allow 24/7 FX booking for companies with EU and US headquarters.

HSBC grew profit before tax by 188% in 2023 to SLR38.2 billion ($126 million).

HSBC had a good year in India in 2023, with profits up by 19% to $1.51 billion, from $1.27 billion the previous year.

HSBC achieved robust growth in 2023 with net profit growing 26% to total $566 million, with growth coming from its commercial, wealth and personal banking businesses.

Throughout 2023, HSBC expanded its presence in the mainland Chinese market, strengthening its operations and advancing strategic initiatives across many sectors.

HSBC introduced initiatives to tackle parental leave, diversity in its hiring process and to improve support for its transgender employees in Hong Kong last year.

In 2023, HSBC further solidified its position as Hong Kong’s best bank under the leadership of Luanne Lim, HSBC Hong Kong’s chief executive. HSBC Group’s market profit before tax soared to $10.7 billion, representing 80% year-on-year growth and contributing 35.3% to the group’s overall pre-tax profit.

HSBC helped Singaporean companies like Next Gen Foods and Multiplier Technologies expand overseas in 2023. It also scaled up its support for local businesses expansion in the region by introducing a $1 billion ASEAN (Association of southeast Asian Nations) growth fund for digital platform businesses and a $150 million venture debt offering aimed at scaling high growth companies.

OCBC had a busy 2023, launching new FX features, application programming interface (API) integration and improvements to its online platform.

OCBC NISP proved an invaluable partner to its small and medium-sized enterprise clients in Indonesia throughout 2023 with the launch of its Nyala Bisnis 2.0 platform and initiatives to empower women-owned SMEs.

Brazil’s Nubank is the momentum story in global banking. In 2023, the bank added 19 million clients (to a total of 93.9 million), and it now can claim to bank 53% of the adult population of Brazil. It is also now seeing a positive operating leverage effect from the growth in its client base. In the fourth quarter of 2023, it recorded revenue of $2.4 billion (Nubank is listed on the NYSE and all its earnings are reported in dollars), which was up 57% on an annual basis. Net income jumped 489% to $360.9 million, with a return on equity of 23%.

Prime minister Donald Tusk’s defeat of the former ruling party PiS in elections last October brought hope for a less strained relationship between Poland and the EU. It also brought hope for more favourable policies towards banks, after the PiS government’s mortgage holidays and bank taxes.

Bank SinoPac has long focused on initiatives to promote responsible and inclusive finance, primarily by channelling loans to small businesses. The total outstanding of such lending to small and medium-sized enterprises was NT$325 billion ($10 billion) at the end of 2023.

In 2023, HSBC further solidified its position as Hong Kong’s best bank. Under the leadership of Luanne Lim, HSBC Hong Kong’s chief executive, the bank’s profit before tax soared to $10.7 billion, representing 80% year-on-year growth and contributing 35.3% to the group’s overall pre-tax profit.

HSBC was the standout candidate in this award this year, dominating transaction banking in Asia.

Societe Generale Côte d’Ivoire is again named the best bank in the country after a year in which profit before tax was up 32% at CFEFr120 billion ($42 million) from CFEFr91 billion in 2022. The bank has shown strong commitment to the Ivory Coast despite exiting other African markets such as the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania and Chad. Indeed, Societe Generale deputy CEO of the group Pierre Palmieri visited Abidjan last year to reinforce this.

Until recently investment banking in central America and the Caribbean was about having the best debt offering. The few international debt capital market mandates were obviously crucial to gain this credibility, but a presence in dollar and local-currency loans was also critical. Today it’s more complicated. The equity capital market still doesn’t really feature, but sustainable finance is crucial to the region. Moreover, the growing cross-border presence of many companies active in these countries means that transaction and treasury services are now areas of true competitive differentiation.

Banreservas’ president Samuel Pereyra would argue that as a state-owned bank, all of its activities are led by a sense of corporate responsibility. Its loan portfolios are directed towards providing credit to industries targeted as crucial for the Dominican economy’s growth and its recent international expansion has been developed to facilitate financing flows between the country and its large international diaspora.

Standard Bank successfully implemented innovative digital products across all banking segments in 2023 while also making important philanthropic contributions in Malawi.

Standard Chartered wins the award this year for making several key enhancements to its digital banking platform, supporting strong growth in customer sales and engagement.

Dominican Republic president Luis Abinader’s election win was good news for state-controlled bank Banreservas because it ensures stability in senior management, led by the bank’s president Samuel Pereyra, at a time when it is on something of a roll.

It is hardly surprising that an Italian bank should excel at lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the backbone of the industrial strategy of the country. SMEs are at the heart of UniCredit’s UniCredit per l’Italia strategy, which has seen a further €10 billion of support extended to individuals and corporates this year – including a special assistance package for Emilia Romagna in May in response to widespread flooding.