Azernews.Az

BAKU – The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), the country’s leading bank, has been named Bank of the Year by The Banker magazine.

The award, one of the most prestigious in the world of finance, was granted in London last Thursday at the 11th annual awards ceremony, IBA spokesman Rauf Aghayev said.

A special panel at The Banker decides with the aid of experts in December every year to grant the Bank of the Year award to the most successful banks from 144 countries, as well as winners in six regions of the world and the winning financial institution in the Global Bank nomination. The decision is made based on the bidder’s activity in the past 12 months and builds on detailed information about the bank's financial performance, innovations and overall growth strategy.

Aghayev said IBA has been recognized as Bank of the Year by The Banker for the ninth time since 2000 and the award marks the professionalism of IBA’s management and staff.

"I would like to note that both 2009, the crisis year, and this year were among the most abundant in terms of the bank’s awards," Aghayev said. He noted that in October last year IBA received the Best Bank in Azerbaijan award from the Euromoney magazine (London), and both in 2009 and 2010 -- for the eighth and ninth time accordingly since 2002 -- it became the winner of the Best Emerging Markets Bank award from the New York-based Global Finance magazine. Also, IBA has been named twice "Best bank of CIS, Central and Eastern Europe" by the London-based Emeafinance magazine. In March 2010, Emeafinance awarded IBA Best Sustainability Deal for its contribution to the project on financing Yeni Yashma, the first-ever project to produce wind power in Azerbaijan. The 118 million euro project envisions construction of 20 windmills with total output capacity of 50 MWt.

IBA has received the highest assessments from the world’s leading rating agencies – Fitch (BBB-) and Moody's (Baa3).

IBA was established in 1992 as a successor of the Azerbaijan branch of the Foreign Economy Bank. IBA has a well-developed branch network and provides banking services to large corporate clients and, to a lesser extent, to individuals.

IBA is the only Azerbaijani bank with state participation. The state-owned share in the bank is 50.2 percent.