ComBank wins 6th Bank of the Year Award from 'The Banker'

The Commercial Bank of Ceylon has been ranked among the cream of the global banking community and the best achievers in the industry, winning a milestone Bank of the Year Sri Lanka award for 2007 from 'The Banker,' the prestigious UK-based magazine that serves the international banking community.

The bank has now won this celebrated international accolade six out of the eight times that the magazine has conducted the awards event, demonstrating a unique degree of consistency in its performance, it said in a statement.

This year, 457 banks from 143 countries vied for a 'Bracken,' the award named after Brendan Bracken, the founding editor of The Banker in 1926 and Chairman of the Financial Times from 1945 to 1958. The magazine named 155 Bracken winners for 2007.
Commenting on Commercial Bank's selection as Bank of the Year 2007, the bank's Managing Director Amitha Gooneratne said: "An in-depth assessment by an expert team of third party evaluators is one of the most credible ways to evaluate the performance of a bank.

In that context, this award is a noteworthy achievement for Commercial Bank, and evidence that all our efforts are yielding solid results."

The Royal Bank of Scotland won the Global Bank of the Year 2007. Among the regional award winners were HSBC for Asia, Fortis for Western Europe, Standard Chartered Bank for Africa, the National Bank of Kuwait for the Middle East and the Standard Bank for Emerging Markets.

Among the country award winners ranked alongside Commercial Bank were the ICICI Bank (India) Standard Chartered (Pakistan), DBS Bank (Singapore), CIMB Group (Malaysia), Bangkok Bank (Thailand), Deutsche Bank (Germany), BNP Paribas (France) and ICBC (Chin).