Legendary investor Warren Buffett once said to a group of managers of Salomon Brothers in the aftermath of the trading scandal that shook the investment bank in 1991: “If you lose dollars for the firm by bad decisions, I will be very understanding. If you lose reputation for the firm, I will be ruthless.” (Source: J. Fuerbringer, New York Times, August 27, 1991).
Given the choice between a well-regarded professional and someone unknown, most of us prefer to do business with the one who has earned a strong reputation. However, even a strong reputation has a shelf life, and in today’s fast-changing world, it can fade quickly. Reputation — built on admiration, excellence, and status — is like water, always flowing somewhere. As a business asset, it is definable, measurable, and — most importantly — always improvable.
With this in mind, a new study set out to identify the most respected wholesale banks operating in the Gulf region. The goal was to create the equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize for wholesale banking. Good name (reputation) is to strong performance as chicken is to egg. It’s not always clear which begets which, but it’s hard to have one without the other. A bank’s success ultimately hinges on its ability to uphold a strong reputation. In essence, business clients rent the reputations of their banks.
To come up with the definitive list of elite Gulf banks, over 3,000 C-level executives and senior managers from Fortune Global 500 and Forbes Global 2000 companies nominated their top three Gulf banks — banks operating in the GCC countries (both local and foreign banks). Banks were rated on six key success factors: [1] client focus, [2] external engagement, [3] competitiveness, [4] quality of leadership and employees, [5] innovativeness, and [6] business model efficiency and effectiveness (for example, the bank’s agility, resilience, client responsiveness, and reliability).
The study, independently conducted, aimed to identify the practices most respected by C-level executives and senior managers. It focused exclusively on wholesale (B2B) banking — i.e., corporate, investment, and commercial (SME) banking. Since C-level executives and senior managers are among the most knowledgeable people in business, their verdict yields the true ‘A list’. It’s hard to imagine a more critical judge. Hence, ‘QNB — Principles of Enduring Success in Gulf Banking’ is the definitive report card on QNB’s reputation, as seen through the eyes of this influential group of decision-makers.
The report, ‘QNB — Principles of Enduring Success in Gulf Banking’, is the first of its kind, focusing exclusively on QNB. It provides practical and actionable insights that will be invaluable to QNB, its competitors, analysts, investors/shareholders, and other stakeholders. For more details on the dataset, methodology, and report contents, visit www.pieterklaasjagersma.com/reports/qnb.