OREANDA-NEWS. December 10, 2010. As informed the Head of the Press Service of the International Bank of Azerbaijan Rauf Agayev, The Banker magazine held 11th annual ceremony of awarding of the one of the most prestigious prizes in the financial world – “Bank of the Year” in London, reported the press-centre of IBA.

Every year in early December, a special evaluation commission with participation of experts decides on the award “Bank of the Year” to the winners from 144 countries, as well as winners in 6 regions of the world and the winner in the category “Global Bank”. Decision to award the prize to a particular bank is driven by its performances over the past 12 months and is based on detailed information on financial results, innovation and the general development strategy of the bank-award applicant.

According to R.Agayev, IBA receives award “Bank of the Year” from The Banker magazine already 9th time since 2000 and considers it as a recognition of the high professionalism of management, employees of the bank: “I would like to note that the last, the crisis 2009 year and this year became one of the richest on the awards for the bank. Thus, in October last year we had received the award “Best Bank in Azerbaijan” from Euromoney magazine (London), and in the past and this year, respectively, for the 8th and 9th time since 2002, we have won the nomination “Best Bank in developing regions” of Global Finance magazine (New York). Also, twice for 2 years the bank honored with award "Best Bank of CIS, Central and Eastern Europe” by “Emeafinance” magazine (London).

“Emeafinance” magazine in March this year also awarded the bank with the prize “Best Sustainability Deal” for participation in the project of funding the first project for the production of wind power in Azerbaijan “Yeni Yashma”. We’d like to remind that the project worth about 118 million Euros includes the construction of 20 windmills with a total production capacity of 50 megawatts. As stressed R.Agayev, banks around the world are increasingly focused on the environmental pillar of their funded projects.

Decision on the financing of any project or business is taken into account with fairly rigid criteria for “ecological compatibility” of the project. IBA acts as the guarantor of the transaction, the main participants of which became Societe Generale and Landesbank Berlin.

We would like also to add that IBA today holds the highest ratings of the international rating agencies Fitch (BBB-) and Moody's (Baa3) in Azerbaijan.