The Banker’s Bank of the Year Awards this year reflect a bumper year for profits, as many banks have posted record earnings in 2003 and continue to improve in the first half of 2004. While the global economic recovery remains unsteady and the political environment uncertain, aggregate profits in our Top 1000 listing in July reached record highs, up 65.4% on the previous year.

Banks naturally perform differently and of the 28 regional, investment banking and technology awards, 19 have different winners from last year, while among the 133 countries, 64 are new winners. In our judging, the Bracken awards focus not only on performance but also – especially in the country awards – on innovation, technology and strategy. And for the third year in a row, HSBC won our Global Bank of the Year by successfully expanding its global network and boosting profits. Our Awards procedure is an extremely complex process done over many months and we would like to thank Tessa Lock, Kate Fallick and our research team for their excellent efforts and for helping to increase the number of entries this year by 25% to almost 600. Besides the Awards, we examine a variety of issues. Jaime Caruana, chairman of the Basel Committee, discusses the recently published Basel II framework and Swiss Re’s CEO, John Coomber, talks about strategy and banking. In capital markets, James Forese, head of Citigroup Global Equities, analyses the momentous changes in the equities market. We look at the growth of bond issuance in euros and whether Europe’s corporate borrowers are undergoing a culture change. We also assess how banks differentiate themselves in the derivatives market and ABN AMRO is our Team of the Month. In FX & Treasury, hedge funds are showing more interest in foreign exchange, but are banks providing the services? And in Global Securities Services, we profile JPMorgan Chase’s institutional trust services (ITS) division. In Retail and Technology, we focus on the need to effectively manage multiple distribution channels and BT’s Chris New examines the opportunities for banks in a digital networked economy. We also look at benchmarking the quality of service in European branches. Elsewhere, we list the Top 300 European banks, study Bahrain’s role as the financial hub of the Gulf and provide a supplement on the impact of increasing regulation. And finally, we look forward to our Awards dinner, sponsored by BT and Oracle, which will be held at the Dorchester Hotel, London on September 7 with keynote speaker Stanley Fischer, vice chairman of Citigroup.

PLEASE ENTER YOUR DETAILS TO WATCH THIS VIDEO

All fields are mandatory

The Banker is a service from the Financial Times. The Financial Times Ltd takes your privacy seriously.

Choose how you want us to contact you.

Invites and Offers from The Banker

Receive exclusive personalised event invitations, carefully curated offers and promotions from The Banker



For more information about how we use your data, please refer to our privacy and cookie policies.

Terms and conditions

Join our community

The Banker on Twitter