More than 260 leading players from the world in finance gathered at Hong Kong’s Grand Hyatt hotel on January 17 to celebrate the best of the industry at FinanceAsia’s 20th annual Achievement Awards.
Highlights of the night included an appearance by Cesar Purisima, the Philippine secretary of finance, who flew in to mingle with bankers who have helped bring his country much-needed investment.
The big individual honour of the Achievement Awards, the Outstanding Achievement Award, went to Helman Sitohang, the Indonesian banker who heads Credit Suisse's regional operation.
In the face of intense competition, the judges said Sitohang stood out for his leadership of Switzerland’s second-largest bank as it restructures its operations to focus more on the serving the growing cohort of billionaires in the region
Sitohang runs a profitable operation and has won investment from headquarters to grow the business further.
“This award is a reflection of the growing importance of Asia Pacific in the global banking industry, as well as the increasing sophistication of the capital markets in the region,” Sitohang said in his speech.
The first set of awards honoured the outstanding deals by country across the region. For a photo gallery of the Country Awards winners, click here.
That was followed by the regional deal awards – which saw Tesco’s sale of Homeplus to MBK for $6.4 billion named the best deal of the year. For a gallery of photos of Deal Awards winners, click here.
Finally came the prestigious House Awards, which saw the region’s outstanding banks put to the test.
HSBC beat stiff competition to claim three of the awards including Best Bank, while DBS took two awards and there were honours for UBS and Morgan Stanley. Bank of China won Borrower of the Year and Freshfields was voted Best Law Firm. For a photo gallery from the House Awards, click here.
And the FinanceAsia quiz proved as fiercely competitive as always. The team from Goldman Sachs ended up taking the honours, beating reigning champions HSBC.
