If an organization in Latin America – corporate, sovereign or multilateral – wants to raise finance, Citi will invariably be part of the conversation. The bank’s financing team, led by Adrian Guzzoni, head of debt capital markets for Latin America, and Marcelo Millen, head of equity capital markets for Latin America, has shown that Citi’s ability to access local and international sources of funding and to present options spanning debt, loans and equity is a compelling proposition for finance departments across the region.

Banco Santander’s headquarters are in Europe, but the centre of gravity of its operations has been drifting westward to Latin America for many years now. Over the review period, the bank posted a solid year of progress among many of its Latin American markets, which comprise Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia and Peru.

It is tempting to conclude that Citi’s impressive suite of treasury management services, for which it wins the award of Latin America’s best bank for transaction services, is the result of the bank knowing that it really needs to excel in this area. Given the growth strategy being pursued by chief executive Jane Fraser, which has seen the bank pull out of many retail banking markets to focus on corporate and investment banking, a market-leading transaction services offering is imperative.

Latin America saw increased interest from many different types of acquirers in the past year as volatility elsewhere boosted the relative attractiveness of the region’s economic, legal and regulatory frameworks.

Banco Pichincha has been developing several strategies to boost social inclusion and improve gender dynamics in Ecuador. The bank now has an impressive portfolio of projects that fit under the corporate responsibility banner.

It is not much fun being a banker in Argentina. But while it is pretty much universally tough for everyone, spare a thought for individuals like Juan Parma, HSBC’s chief executive Argentina and head of wealth and personal banking America. Because, while Parma’s peers in Argentine banks face many of the same challenges he does, at least for them the whole organization is still focused on the country. HSBC’s global leadership could be forgiven for skipping over the country in global strategy meetings.

When financial analysts argue about whether economies of scale exist in cross border retail banking, they simply need to point to BAC International Bank (BAC). Led by Rodolfo Tabash, the bank is a big player in all the regional markets and, while these are small individually, together they total more than 50 million people.

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.

This year’s winner of the award for Latin America’s best digital bank, Davivienda, has not just adopted the digital channels of new startup rivals but has gone further. The bank has embraced digital banking, blockchain adaptation, artificial intelligence and the metaverse. The result is an intriguing and compelling mix of upgraded old-bank processes through digital infrastructure and completely new business opportunities.

BNP Paribas’s sustainability strategy for Latin America continues to mature, underpinning the bank’s strong position across the continent. The bank has made considerable efforts to deepen its focus on the three most important sustainability issues in Latin America: protecting biodiversity, promoting social development and decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries.

The retrenchment that Citi has made in the retail markets of central America has clearly not impacted its dominance of corporate and investment banking in the region. It wins the award for central America’s best investment bank again this year.

There is no better wealth manager in Latin America than Banco Santander. It won the award for best private bank in Latin America in Euromoney’s 2023 private banking awards.

UniCredit has long been regarded as a leader in corporate banking in central and eastern Europe. Transaction services continues to be a vital part of this regional franchise under Riccardo Madinelli, head of transactions and payments for central and eastern Europe.

Good perceptions of corporate social responsibility have become ever more important for banks in central and eastern Europe since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Government clients and the reduced presence of international banks are typical features of finance in central and eastern Europe, and M&A is no exception. But the region is not beyond the reach of JPMorgan, central and eastern Europe’s best bank for advisory.

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.

Despite the war in Ukraine, the past year has seen UniCredit operating with more of the purpose and commitment that international banks in central and eastern Europe too often lack.

Under chief executive Hakan Binbasgil, Akbank demonstrated an innovative and proactive approach to small and medium-sized enterprise banking during the awards period, despite the difficult operating environment in its home market of Turkey.

Even rivals recognize that OTP Bank has advanced strongly in digital banking recently, ensuring that its technology wins and retains customers in Hungary and across central and eastern Europe.

Last year, ING was the first bank in central and eastern Europe to stop providing dedicated finance to new upstream oil and gas fields, despite the fact that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatened energy supply on the continent. The Dutch lender remains the bank of choice for green or sustainability labelled deals in the region.

The past year has seen Societe Generale play a crucial role in central and eastern Europe’s financing markets, led by Philippe Madar, head of corporate coverage for Europe. It is top of Dealogic’s mandated lead arranger rankings for regional syndicated loans in the awards period. Its market share in loans was almost twice as high as the next ranked bank, and it was also involved in some of the key bond deals during the awards period.

Wealth management across central and eastern Europe is still in a state of flux, nearly 18 months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In that period, some lenders have pulled back from specific markets in the region; others have sought ways to cut costs by reducing their roster of senior private bankers.

Singapore is Asia’s leading private banking hub – and at the heart of that story is DBS, a bank that has remade itself over the past decade and a half into one of the world’s best wealth managers.

Citi takes everything it does seriously, but there is a special place in its collective consciousness for transaction services. This often-sprawling area of financial services, which chief executive Jane Fraser calls the crown jewel of the bank, is the beating heart of all Citi stands for.

UOB is as committed as ever to serving small and medium-sized enterprises in its home base of Singapore – where it reckons it banks one of every two SMEs – as it is to clients in key markets across the region. From mid-sized corporates on the fringes of requiring capital markets services, to micro-enterprises, clients have come to rely on it for funding, financial advice and best-in-class banking services.

There is perhaps no other digital bank anywhere in the world like kakaobank. Many pure-play digital banks seem to have an in-built ceiling: at a specific point, organizational flaws appear, they cease adding new customers and start to appear more dysfunctional than disruptor.

Football clubs undergoing a period of transition often talk of needing a transfer window or two to get where they need to be. More often than not, this doesn’t work. Better-run teams continue to make clear-minded decisions that keep them ahead of the pack. Catching up is always hard to do.

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.

It was ultra-competitive at the top of the M&A league tables in the review period. Goldman Sachs wins the award for Asia’s best bank for advisory this year because it was there on most of the big mergers and acquisitions. The bank advised on 76 deals in Asia Pacific in the 12 months to the end of March 2023, worth a total of $181.9 billion, according to Dealogic, for a 16.87% share of the market.

Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) is a worthy winner of this award. At the heart of the bank’s philanthropic efforts is its BPI Foundation, which touches the lives of more than one million financially under-served Filipinos in 75 of the country’s 81 provinces.

Morgan Stanley is a powerhouse in financing. In Asia Pacific ex-China, the US bank helped to complete 42 equity capital markets deals – more than any other bank over the 12 months to the end of March 2023 – worth a total of $5.4 billion, according to Dealogic. And in debt capital markets, it completed 419 deals worth $46.2 billion.

It is no surprise that HSBC is Asia’s best bank for sustainable finance for the sixth year in a row. Across its commercial, retail, global banking, markets and securities, capital markets, trade finance and risk management teams, the lender has created an extensive sustainability knowledge base that few of its rivals can match.

A combination of rising interest rates, depreciating currencies and poor credit ratings make it difficult for African economies to tap into global financial markets to fund their sustainable transition. At the same time, the impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly severe across the continent.

Africa’s best bank for transaction services, Societe Generale operates in 19 countries in Africa, with 4.3 million clients, including 175,000 corporate clients. Its global transaction and payment services team is led by Alexandre Maymat.

Compared with European banks that have built African retail operations, Deutsche Bank might not be as well-known as an Africa-focused lender. But it has long had important corporate and investment banking operations on the continent. It is one of the largest correspondent banks for African financial institutions and in the previous decade it helped many African sovereigns issue debut international bonds.

For the second year in a row, Equity Bank is Africa’s best bank for corporate responsibility. Under the leadership of group CEO James Mwangi, Equity Bank continues to create shared value for clients and citizens across its banking business, as well as its foundation, which dates back to 2008.

Standard Bank Wealth & Investment stands head and shoulders above the wealth management competition in Africa. The South African bank is a regional powerhouse in the sector, with private banking offices in 14 African markets, including Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana, as well as the whole of southern Africa.

Like most of South Africa’s big banks, Nedbank is on a mission to reform and re-engineer its IT system, using it to attract new business, cut costs and roll out new services.

No African lender can match Ecobank Transnational’s reach. The Togo-based financial institution is a worthy winner of this year’s award for Africa’s best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises – the second year in a row it has received the title.

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.

Evidence of an ability to leverage networks across Africa and beyond has helped Citi win the title of Africa’s best bank for advisory this year. While the firm has a strong franchise in South Africa, the rest of the continent is now becoming more important as a growth market. This award is therefore largely thanks to the team led by chairman of investment banking for Middle East and Africa, Miguel Azevedo, and Claude-Stephanie Ngningha, Citi’s head of investment banking in Africa outside South Africa and Egypt.

In many African countries, Standard Bank is not as large as it would like to be. But it has a physical presence in 20 African countries and is already by far the biggest pan-African group in terms of its scale in the main sub-Saharan markets, the size of its balance sheet and its absolute profit.

In April 2022, the European Central Bank launched a call for payment service providers, banks and technology companies to engage in the creation of prototypes for a digital euro and associated payment services.

Isabel Guerreiro, head of retail and digital for Europe at Banco Santander, describes her employer as a digital bank with branches. This is what is behind the Spanish bank’s continued success with the small and medium-sized enterprise segment across Europe.

Last year, Rothschild & Co advised on a higher volume of M&A transactions than any of its European rivals, with its $220 billion of completed deals putting it comfortably ahead of Barclays on $207 billion, Lazard's $185 billion, BNP Paribas' $178 billion and Deutsche Bank's $145 billion.

With retail banking operations in Belgium, France, Italy and Luxembourg, BNP Paribas is the clear leader among a very small handful of European banks that have grown beyond being national champions in their home markets to serve personal customers across the continent.

BNP Paribas’s wealth management team has had a stellar year. In Euromoney’s 2023 private banking awards, it was named Europe’s best private bank and the Middle East’s best private bank. It also won a hatfull of country awards, including best domestic private bank in France and best international private bank in Belgium and in Switzerland.

The lasting impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on global energy markets has steered the sustainability conversation towards efficiency and practicality in western Europe. Beyond investing in low-carbon solutions to reduce the energy intensity of across a range of sectors, banks were preoccupied with clients’ transition plans to reduce their own financed emissions, while facing tougher disclosure regulations and public scrutiny of their continued financing of the oil and gas sector.

UBS’s financing business might not have the widest scope in the industry these days, nor does the bank top the debt and equity capital markets league tables, but what it does have is expertise that is unusually well tailored to the times. For its skill in responding to its target clients’ needs, and particularly those of financial institutions, it is our pick as western Europe’s best bank for financing.

The past year has seen Societe Generale reap the benefits of its long-term investment initiative in its transaction services business across Europe.

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.

Perhaps it is no surprise that when Euromoney sits down with Bank of America to discuss the bank’s pitch for this category there are five people in the meeting – and they are all women. This is a bank that has led from the front across all aspects of corporate social responsibility (CSR), including diversity and inclusion (D&I).

Global macroeconomic turmoil might seem far from the day-to-day concerns of small and medium-sized enterprises, but those issues are getting ever closer to the heart of their business. Inflation, supply chains, labour shortages and commodity prices were just some of the challenges thrown up in the awards period.

The volatile conditions during much of the awards period meant that banks supporting borrowers in North America needed to be flexible.

As the immediate chaos of the global financial crisis subsided, Morgan Stanley took a long hard look at its strategy and chose to focus on wealth and investment management. It is a decision that has paid off. Private banking generates steadier, more reliable income streams than the more cyclical business of investment banking.

Citi’s transaction services bankers can be in no doubt of the firm’s commitment to their business. Chief executive Jane Fraser is on record calling the Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) division the crown jewel of the bank and she rarely misses an opportunity to refer to it. The bank invested $1 billion in technology for this business alone in 2022.

The volume of completed M&A deals involving a North American buyer or target was steeply down in the awards period this year, with a 41% drop to just under $2 trillion. But in volatile times activity concentrates on the very best franchises, and this year demonstrated that well. For increasing its market share and strengthening its already dominant position, Goldman Sachs is North America’s best bank for advisory.

From the outside looking in, sustainable finance in North America seems to act much like a see-saw. Last year, news about the wave of anti-environmental, social and governance legislation coming from Republican states was immediately followed by $500 billion of financial incentives for clean energy and healthcare under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). This was then followed by concerns over gridlock when the Republicans took control of the House.

All banks today claim to have inclusion, diversity, accessibility and sustainability programmes, but some stand out for the breadth of their initiatives. Under chief executive Bharat Masrani, Canada’s TD Bank Group is one that has made corporate responsibility a priority for years in its approach to customers, clients and employees.

Bank of America has become a global leader in digital banking steadily and without fuss. It has been a quiet route to success for the US financial firm; one done its own way, on its own timetable, and at its own pace.

UBS continues to assert its position as the Middle East’s best bank for wealth management. It won this award last year and the one before that – and the one before that. It is active in every important market, continues to expand its reach and innovates intelligently, introducing products tailored to regional clients’ specific needs.

In the Middle East, sustainability is about adaptation, not just to the increasingly stark evidence of climate change but also to the global demand for a more diversified energy mix to lessen fossil-fuel extraction.

Once again, Emirates NBD walks away with the award for the Middle East’s best bank. The Dubai bank posted net profit of $3.54 billion in the full year 2022, up 40% year on year, boosted by strong returns from investment banking, treasury sales income and trade finance. It has continued that strong performance in the current year, posting a first-quarter 2023 profit of $1.63 billion, bolstered by net interest income of $1.96 billion, up 69% year on year.

All big banks say they are leaders in transaction services, few really are. HSBC is always in contention for this award and takes the honours after a year full of new services and innovation.

Citi is the standout winner of the award for the region’s best bank for advisory in 2023. In a strong year for M&A, it was way ahead of the pack. It advised on 18 completed deals collectively worth $32.1 billion, giving it a 26.5% share of the market, according to data from Dealogic.

Arab Bank has long been at the forefront of innovation in lending to small and medium-sized enterprises. Its regional reach gives it the kind of presence few can match. At the time of writing, the Jordanian bank oversees a network of 600-plus branches on five continents and boasts offices in Jordan, Lebanon, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Kuwaiti citizens are proud of the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), the country’s largest bank by assets, and for good reason. NBK views itself as a pillar of the corporate and financial community. It deserves to win this award for several reasons, starting with its willingness to connect with worthy new initiatives.

HSBC wins the award for the Middle East’s best bank for financing this year. During the awards period the bank topped the equity capital markets league tables, completing 12 deals – more than any other financial institution – worth just over $4 billion, according to Dealogic.

Mashreq Bank is a perennial winner of this award. Can any other regional lender compete with its ambition to be not just the best digital bank in the region but one of the best in the world? So far at least answer is a resounding ‘no’.

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.

First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) is yet again the deserved winner of the award for the Middle East’s best bank for financing.

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.

Citi’s strength across the capital markets, allied to an ability to put its balance sheet to good use with key clients, always put it in contention for the award for Africa’s best bank for financing.

Equity Bank Kenya has been closely engaged in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives since its launch in 1984. The award for Africa’s best bank for corporate responsibility this year is recognition of its position as a leader in the field.

Even as some wealth managers consolidate their regional presence, focusing on one or two core markets, UBS continues to expand across the Middle East, adding relationship managers and new offices. The result is a growing business and product range attracting more new wealthy clients.

HSBC has dominated the environmental, social and governance (ESG) space for many years, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Middle East. There are many reasons why it deserves to be named the region’s best bank for sustainable finance.

Citi’s commitment to its customers, to innovation and to unveiling new products that adapt to the shifting needs and expectations of corporates and regulators put it easily ahead of its rivals this year.

Mashreq Bank may not be the Middle East’s largest lender, but it is the region’s most digitally innovative and influential financial institution. Its digital journey was already well advanced when Ahmed Abdelaal was named chief executive in late 2019, but since then innovation has gone into overdrive.

Ecobank Transnational brands itself as a pan-African lender – and such it is. Founded in 1985, it now serves millions of customers across 33 sub-Saharan African markets. And with so many multinational banks having made their excuses and departed, it is now arguably more important and integral to the region’s smaller businesses than ever before.

M&A in Africa last year was the classic one-trick pony, in that all the action took place in a single market, South Africa. Despite that, the competition for this award was fierce. It came down to a straight fight between Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, with the former walking away with the prize in yet another impressive year.

It can at times feel hard to find worthy causes and initiatives that National Bank of Bahrain (NBB) doesn’t foster and fund.

No other private bank in Africa can compete with Standard Bank, the region’s largest by assets and earnings. The Johannesburg-based lender has a dedicated on-the-ground wealth management presence in 15 countries, including Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, employing 449 industry professionals.

Egypt’s Commercial International Bank (CIB) has emerged as not only a very good bank for small and medium-sized enterprises but also a key innovator in a sometimes overlooked area of finance.

It has been a busy few years for First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB). A change at the top of the institution last year saw Hana Al Rostamani ascend to the position of group chief executive, the first woman to lead the bank.

JPMorgan is the standout winner of the award for the region’s best bank for advisory. According to Dealogic data, the firm advised on 22 completed M&A transactions in the year to the end of March 2022 worth a total of $66.51 billion, giving it a 34.2% market share. No other investment bank came close in terms of either deal volume or deal count.

Societe Generale deserves the award for Africa’s best bank for sustainable finance on many levels. The French bank chooses its projects wisely, demonstrating an ability to marry quantity with quality. It works in lockstep with international and local partners, and with regional private and public-sector corporates, agencies and initiatives to achieve its ambitions.

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.

Ecobank Transnational’s sheer weight of presence – it delivers banking services to 32 million people in 33 sub-Saharan African countries – could have been a hindrance, a geographical burden. Instead, it transformed into a positive, and the bank has done so in large part by drawing up an impressively coherent digital strategy.

Post-Barclays, Absa continues to expand its regional footprint, adding new services each year and doing the nuts and bolts of banking well. Given the central role that trade and the flow of cash play in the region, there are few more important awards than that for Africa’s best bank for transaction services – and Absa is a worthy winner.

Ecobank Transnational ticks a lot of boxes. The Togo-headquartered bank is undeniably a true regional lender, with a presence in 33 sub-Saharan African markets, from the big (Nigeria, South Africa) to the tiny (São Tomé & Principe, Guinea-Bissau).

BNDES’s record profits in the first quarter of 2022 (up 32% over the first quarter of 2021 to R$12.9 billion) point to something transformational going on at the state-owned development bank. Led by president Gustavo Montezano since July 2019, BNDES also made R$34.1 billion ($6.68 billion) in 2021 – a record year and 65% above 2020.

One of the consequences of Citi’s withdrawal from local banking markets in Latin America is that the US bank is especially sensitive to any potential loss of market share in corporate debt financing in the affected countries.

BBVA has always prided itself as being an active community participant in the countries in which it operates in Latin America. However, the bank’s recent efforts to deepen the integration of its Latin American banks have increased the value of the combined efforts in this area.

UBS reported a record year for its wealth management business in Latin America last year as the Swiss bank married regional presence with a distinctive global client proposition.

BNP Paribas has made an environmental, social and governance virtue out of its legacy commitment to the mining and energy sectors in Latin America. A decade ago, the bank saw which way the wind was blowing and, noting that it was towards renewable power turbines, moved early into sustainable finance.

The transaction services franchise at UniCredit combines an international network with much deeper regional coverage than other banks, typically US rivals, which lack the same network in central and eastern Europe.

Despite selling some retail banks in central and eastern Europe to OTP, mostly in smaller markets, Societe Generale remains heavily involved in financing in this region under its global banking and advisory unit, led in CEE, Middle East and Africa by Denis Stas de Richelle. In Czech Republic and Romania, SocGen’s international banking operations are plugged into its local universal banks. But even as it has sold banks in other countries, it has sought to hold on to its sovereign and corporate clients there. It also enjoys a cooperation agreement with OTP in corporate and investment banking.

BofA Securities wins this year’s award for Latin America’s best bank for transaction services. The bank has been steadily building up its corporate relationships in Latin America, while its digital innovation in this business has cemented its ability to provide local services at the level of the local banks.

The two most active investment banks in the Caribbean region are Citi and JPMorgan. While it would seem natural to consider them competitors – and of course they are – it is striking how many deals there are in which they team up.

Despite its growth into one of biggest banks in Romania, small and medium-sized enterprises remain core to the strategy of Banca Transilvania and SMEs constitute a large proportion of its lending. In 2021, its SME loan portfolio reached L19.2 billion ($4.06 billion), with L3.7 billion of new loans during the year, reaching 18,000 SMEs and micro-enterprises.

Greater support for capital-light investment banking business at UniCredit since the arrival of Andrea Orcel as chief executive in early 2021 is fostering a change in mindset in the firm’s advisory franchise. The region’s best bank for advisory also brought support in terms of product and sector expertise thanks to hires in Munich and Milan. That’s adding to the bank’s existing advantages in terms of geographic coverage, which includes around 50 M&A bankers spread across eight central and eastern European markets.

Banco Lafise takes the award for the region’s best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises this year because of the adaptation of its 2021 growth model to an SME-centric approach – in line with its home market’s biggest needs.

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.

Turkish banks are known across Europe for their advances in digital banking. This is often attributed to a relative lack of legacy IT infrastructure, but it’s also due to early investments in digital banking, as well as factors such as a younger retail base in the home market.

Central and eastern Europe’s best bank for corporate responsibility this year inevitably goes to an institution that has focused on aid for Ukrainian refugees. For many banks in the region, this was an overwhelming priority during the first days and weeks of the war.

BTG Pactual’s recent success has been based in large part on the digital platform that it has built in recent years. The bank targets opportunities where financial deepening, disintermediation and technological adoption intersect in Latin America.

BTG Pactual isn’t new to winning Euromoney’s regional awards for excellence – but previous successes have been for the bank’s investment banking franchise. This year, Euromoney recognizes BTG Pactual’s successful reversal of the orthodox model of business evolution from retail and corporate banking to investment banking.

The successful growth of BAC International Bank throughout central America and the Caribbean region led to the bank being spun off from parent Banco de Bogotá. Although the bank is no longer part of this group – it has its own listing in Panama – the primary shareholders remain Banco de Bogotá and Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo, chief executive of Grupo Aval.

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.

Erste Group’s long-term focus on European Union states in central and southeastern Europe proved to be particularly well judged this year. Other big banks in this region now face billions of euros of losses in Russia and major headaches in managing their operations in that state. Erste is the only major regional lender with negligible direct exposure to Russia.

While the main story of the 2022 Latin America awards is the emergence of BTG Pactual as a retail force, the bank’s senior management team, headed by chief executive Roberto Sallouti, clearly hasn’t let the investment banking team take its eye off the ball.

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.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatening vital energy supplies to central and eastern Europe, sustainable finance initiatives – especially in renewable energy – are more important than ever. Regional banks are increasingly focusing on sustainable finance and this year the bank that stands out is ING, CEE’s best bank for sustainable finance.

Now, hear us out. A year ago, we were griping about Citi’s decision to sell consumer businesses in a clutch of Asian markets. The only way it made sense, we argued, was if Citi put its money where its mouth is: deployed the freed capital into its wealth and institutional businesses in Asia and doubled down on that with tangible action, rather than the proceeds just drifting into some vague balance-sheet objective.

It was a knife-edge decision between Citi, stronger in top-end cash management, and HSBC, stronger in trade, this year. Last year, we decided trade was the theme to reward in a Covid-blighted year; this year we looked at progress in payments, where Citi had an excellent year.

For a time after its IPO in August, six-year-old branchless KakaoBank was the largest financial institution in South Korea by market capitalization. That didn’t last through the global tech stock collapse – and was always a little absurd – but the $2.2 billion IPO, which is still trading above its issue price, is a reminder of just how far this institution has come.

Always a strong player in small and medium-sized enterprise banking, DBS enjoyed a stellar year driven by digital investments, careful credit management and great progress in India.

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.

BNP Paribas is western Europe’s best bank for financing. It ranks first in the Dealogic bookrunner rankings in debt capital markets, ahead of Deutsche Bank in second place, JPMorgan in third, Barclays in fourth and HSBC fifth.

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.