Welcome to a truly memorable edition of The Banker. Our Top 1000 edition has for many years become a collector’s item and this year is no exception. As well as pages of tables and figures detailing the world’s leading banks (see page 177 onwards), this issue contains a breadth of coverage that, even by the standards of our global and universal palette, is still pretty impressive.
We get well into carbon emissions trading (even though the name is something of a misnomer, since it is the rights rather than the emissions that are traded) with our Team of the Month choice (see page 34), as well as our very first Financial Intelligence Guide, the first in a series of reports in which a range of experts give the lowdown on weighty financial matters.
The Top 1000 issue is, in fact, a bit of supplement-fest – looking at such varied topics as equity derivatives, asset and liability management, the challenges facing savings banks, the Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa), enterprise data management, and the Cayman Islands. We are happy to give our readers the in-depth study of these important topics that the supplement format allows.
But never let it be said that an edition of The Banker forgot that tried-and-tested journalistic formula that good reading in any business is about people (as well as technical issues).
In this issue, Karina Robinson interviews the central bank governor of India, Yaga Venugopal Reddy (page 26); investment banking editor Geraldine Lambe talks to the chairman and CEO of UBS Investment Bank, Huw Jenkins (page 28); and technology editor Dan Barnes profiles the CIO of Siam Commercial Bank, Deepak Sarup, in Techvision (page 134).
There are interviews with the finance ministers of Egypt and Trinidad and Tobago as well as coverage of our annual technology awards and a recent celebration in Beijing of The Banker’s Top 100 Chinese banks listing.
On countries, there is equally broad coverage: Norway, Sweden, Bulgaria, Vietnam, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia and then some in the Top 1000 listing itself. As usual, we provide regional reports as well as country breakdowns so that bankers can easily see how their institutions fared both globally and nationally. Congratulations to research editor Terry Baker-Self and his team, Beata Ghavimi and Giulia Pauli, for their tireless efforts in presenting the listings.
It is hard to tear a banker away from a list of figures, we know, but this issue has our premier listing and a lot more besides. Too much, in fact, to even trust it to your research library (where we guarantee it will go missing before September). Much more advisable to lock it in your desk for safe-keeping.
