This year we decided to establish an award for Best Asian Bank and reveal it on the night of our inaugural Country Awards Dinner held in Singapore on Friday September 2. Our process began by shortlisting the Best Banks from each country by selecting the winners from our 2005 Country Awards. This constituted nine banks Bank of Communications, Bank Danamon, BPI, Chinatrust, DBS, HDFC Bank, Public Bank, Shinhan Bank, and Siam Commercial Bank. Hong Kong's winner, HSBC was not shortlisted on the basis that it is a global bank based in London and could not be fairly compared on a like-for-like basis with the other Asian banks.
We then...