BDO Unibank was named FinanceAsia’s Best Asian Bank for 2013 on Thursday night, at our annual Country Awards dinner.
This breaks a winning streak for Malaysia’s Public Bank, which has won the award for the past three years. It represents the first time FinanceAsia has given this award to a Philippine Bank, reflecting the rise in fortunes of the country, notably its improved credit rating.
Standard & Poor's and Fitch upgraded the country to investment grade earlier this year, and in July Moody's Investors Service put the country on positive watch, indicating it will make a similar move this year.
The award is determined by ranking the winners of ‘Best Bank’ in each market along several criteria, with data provided by SNL Financial.
The criteria include year-on-year change in profitability, net interest margin, loan-to-asset ratios, return on equity, price-to-book ratios, non-performing loan levels and analyst ratings, as well as credit ratings.
BDO Unibank performed especially well in profitability and loans to assets.
Other shortlisted banks included: ICBC (China), HDFC (India), Bank Central Asia (Indonesia), Shinhan Financial (Korea), Public Bank (Malaysia), DBS (Singapore), CTBC (Taiwan) and Siam Commercial Bank (Thailand).
Other ‘best banks’ this year included Brac Bank (Bangladesh) and Vietcombank (Vietnam) but we lacked sufficient data to make the same type of comparison. HSBC (best bank in Hong Kong) was excluded from the competition on the basis of being a global, London-listed institution.
This year’s Country Awards dinner was held at Fort Canning Hotel in Singapore.
