Raiffeisen Bank Kosovo is the country’s best bank after a year in which it introduced of a series of new and enhanced products across its banking businesses, materially grew its client base and generated a record net profit.

Raiffeisen Bank is Albania’s best bank this year in recognition of its retail, corporate and treasury banking services, and its strong financial performance during the year. This was demonstrated across product and service enhancements in its main three banking businesses.

Banking small and medium-sized companies across central and eastern Europe has become intensely competitive for the regional banks. Even amid the anaemic economic growth of last year, competition to grow the SME client base remained high as banks sought to expand their market share and boost assets.

In an interview with Euromoney, European Banking Authority chair José Manuel Campa joins the European Central Bank and others in pressuring banks to do more to prepare for geopolitical risks spreading from Russia to China, the US and Middle East.

Extracting value from Russia via a stake in Strabag previously owned by Oleg Deripaska shouldn’t be confused with a proper disentanglement from Russia by Raiffeisen. The main impetus for the transaction may, in fact, lie with Deripaska and Strabag’s other shareholders.

Societe Generale has exited, and Citi is winding down in retail, but the two biggest remaining Western European players in Russia are also spending a lot of time working out their exposures and operations in the country.

Wealth management in central and eastern Europe is undergoing a period of rapid and fundamental reorientation after the invasion of Ukraine and the accompanying international financial isolation of Russia.