James Eedes reveals the results of The Banker’s second FX banks listing. Once again, UBS is the runaway victor but there is still much to play for in terms of global control.

UBS has again come out top in The Banker’s best foreign exchange banks ranking. In the second year of The Banker compiling the listing, UBS dominates 10 out of 25 categories, easily eclipsing its closest rivals Deutsche Bank and Citigroup.

UBS takes top honours in Best Overall FX Service; Best Relationship Management; Best Pricing; Best Execution; Best Spot Service; Best Forwards and Swaps Service and Best Options Service. Far from resting on its laurels, UBS also garners top spot for the Most Improved Service.

Deutsche was provided with some succour: it was ranked best for research and trading strategy advice.

If the top of the rankings are dominated by UBS, Deutsche and Citigroup, it’s a scuffle thereafter with a raft of different banks vying for position. It is interesting to note the strong performance of regional players, such as Nordea and SEB, but for the rest the performance is dominated by global names.

Surprisingly, UBS does not lead in any of the geographic regions. In each there is a jostle for rankings, with Citigroup taking honours in four regions – North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. No other bank comes out in more than one of the other five regions, with honours shared between Deutsche in the eurozone, Royal Bank of Scotland in the UK, Nordea in Scandinavia, HSBC in Asia and Standard Chartered in Africa. It is clear that no one bank has a clear, undisputed global footprint.

The Banker’s FX poll is a qualitative survey of client attitudes towards the service they experience. It does not take into account market share or volumes traded.

A questionnaire was sent to a global sample of non-market-making banks, non-banking corporations and fund managers. The database was extracted from various contact lists held by the Financial Times Group and refined to target selected individuals.

A total of 131 respondents filled in the questionnaire, of which 39% came from banks, 53% corporates and 8% fund managers. Of the respondents, 27% traded up to $50m, 14% traded between $50m-$100m; 22% traded between $100m-$500m; 8% traded $500m-$1bn; 18% traded $1bn-$10bn; and 11% traded over $10bn. These trading volumes, however, had no bearing on the end rankings.

With the exception of the category Banks Most Commonly Used For FX Services, for which respondents listed up to 10 banks used, respondents were asked to rank their top three banks in each category. Banks ranked first were awarded three points, those ranked second were awarded two points and those ranked third were given one point. The final tally per bank per category shapes the ranking. The top scoring bank was indexed to a 100 in each category with the trailing banks indexed accordingly.

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