Risk Awards 2026: The winners

Citi claims top derivatives prize, lifetime award for Dennis McLaughlin, JP Morgan wins equities

US president Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcement threw the markets for a loop in April. Stocks crashed, with US Treasuries and the dollar also selling off, in an unusual parallel move that triggered a mass repositioning of global portfolios. As volumes surged, market liquidity was tested in the most extreme way.

Many of the winners of this year’s Risk Awards earned their stripes in the seven days following Liberation Day.

Some began preparing for a dollar correction even before Trump’s inauguration. The consensus view in January was that the new president’s proposed tariffs would result in a stronger dollar. Bank of America – winner of currency derivatives house of the year – took a contrarian view: that the dollar would remain strong in the short term and then weaken as retaliatory tariffs hit US inflation.

While there were few takers for the trade initially, BofA’s short dollar view meant it was well placed to handle client unwinds in April. The FX business traded more vega on April 3 than it had ever seen before – 4.5 times its daily average of $5 million vega in 2024.

“When things kicked off in March and April, BofA leaned in – and then some,” says a trader at a large US hedge fund.

Psychologically, you don’t want people to overly focus on [risk] and stop making markets. That’s part of why you keep risk light, or you come in nimble

Deirdre Dunn, Citi

“We had stuff to unwind, and saw banks charge a premium, but they took it off our hands and matched or beat the price of other banks 100% of the time.”

For others, the first signs of trouble surfaced weeks before Liberation Day, on the other side of the Atlantic. Euro swap spreads moved erratically after Germany’s new coalition government agreed to loosen the country’s strict debt rules in early March. Citi’s rates team took that as a cue to cut risk. The business went into April at around 60% of risk capacity. That meant it was in a good position to absorb customer flows when US Treasuries began selling off violently after Liberation Day, racking up a market share of 25–30% in some popular spread trades.

Clients praise Citi’s rates desks for continuously making markets during the worst of the turmoil.

“We were doing a good amount of risk management at the time, and Citi was easily the most reliable, 24 hours a day,” says one client.

A second client confirms Citi “had a disproportionate share of activity” in US rates in early April.

Deirdre Dunn, Citi’s global head of rates, chalks it up to prudent risk management in the days leading up to Liberation Day: “Psychologically, you don’t want people to overly focus on [risk] and stop making markets. That’s part of why you keep risk light, or you come in nimble – you take these steps to ensure that you can scale up in the moment.”

Citi also executed some impressive strategic transactions later in the year for both corporate and sovereign clients, including the government of Colombia and Pemex, Mexico’s national oil company.

Those deals capped off a banner year for the bank, which recently completed the roll-out of an in-house risk system that now covers the entire markets business, and an innovative system for allocating capital. Citi claims Risk.net’s top prize for derivatives house of the year, along with the awards for inflation derivatives and for client clearing.

A ‘game-changer’

Citi was not the only bank scaling up when markets turned volatile in April. At JP Morgan, equity derivatives revenues jumped 40% in the first three quarters of 2025, with volumes surging across flow, exotics and delta one. The bank relied heavily on technology and automation to handle the deluge of customer trades in April. Nearly half of all flow vanilla requests-for-quote (RFQs) were auto-quoted, while the number of RFQs handled by the bank’s execution platform tripled. That level of automation meant JP Morgan was able to unlock flows that were not previously economical, such as $5 million call options, which typically ramp up during periods of stress.

Other winners also showed their chops in April.

Barclays – Risk.net’s credit derivatives house of the year – held over 50% of the market share in the credit default swaps of major companies caught in the tariff crosshairs, including car manufacturers Volvo and Nissan.

At CME Group – exchange of the year – all major interest rate derivatives traded at their minimum price increments despite average daily volumes jumping 46% to a record 18.4 million contracts in April.

Total return swaps can be a weapon of mass destruction when used as an emergency loan, but a game-changer when used wisely

Javier Cuéllar, Colombian Ministry of Finance

The Risk Awards also recognise achievements on the buy side. Our hedge fund of the year, LMR Partners, revamped its risk function after being badly caught out by the pandemic-induced volatility in 2020. Those changes proved pivotal when volatility struck again this year. Crucially, the firm massively reduced its exposure to swap spreads – a popular hedge fund bet on the difference between swap rates and US Treasury yields narrowing – before April’s tariff announcement, which caused the spread to widen dramatically.

“We talked a lot about positioning and about this trade becoming crowded, and I think that influenced and informed the PM in question in reducing the position ahead of the widening,” says Eric Hamard, LMR’s chief risk officer.

Arguably the most impressive story in this year’s Risk Awards belongs to The Ministry of Finance and Public Credit of the Republic of Colombia – the sovereign risk manager of the year – which executed a series of transactions that are projected to reduce its annual interest payments to around 3% from nearly 5% in April, and bring the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio down to 55% from above 60% at the end of 2024.

The largest and most complex of those deals was a $9.3 billion total return swap to synthetically convert some of Colombia’s local currency and US dollar debt into Swiss francs. The FX hedge provider on the transaction was Citi.

“Total return swaps can be a weapon of mass destruction when used as an emergency loan, but a game-changer when used wisely,” Javier Cuéllar, director of public credit and national treasury at Colombia’s Ministry of Finance, tells Risk.net.

Interesting – and brilliant

Vladimir Lucic and Alex Tse were named Risk.net’s quants of the year for their work on a market-making algorithm for options that will serve as the backbone of the soon-to-be-launched market-making business of Marex Solutions, where Lucic is head quant.

This year’s lifetime achievement award goes to Dennis McLaughlin, whose career reads like a potted history of modern financial risk management. After 10 years as a maths professor at Princeton, McLaughlin helped implement Basel II capital rules at Citi, played a part in tackling Merrill Lynch’s burgeoning subprime problem, overhauled the risk framework at LCH as swaps clearing took off, worked on digital settlement at Fnality, and now finds himself taking responsibility for the reputation of one of finance’s favourite punchbags: the World Bank.

“I do what I find interesting,” McLaughlin tells Risk.net. A recurring theme during the interview. “It’s never really been about chasing after money or a big job title. If it’s interesting, I’ll do it – I’ll do it for nothing, just for the intellectual enjoyment of it.”

Those who worked with McLaughlin over the years say he’s more than just interesting. Suneel Bakhshi, deputy group CEO of Mizuho Financial, and former chief executive of LSEG, says simply: “He’s brilliant.”

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As always, picking the winners was hard. All candidates had to submit detailed information on their businesses, as a precursor to lengthy, off-the-record interviews. Shortlisted candidates were then subject to a due diligence phase, in which the editorial team spoke to each firm’s clients and other market participants. The final decisions were made by Risk.net’s editors and journalists, weighing a number of factors, including risk management, creativity and innovation, liquidity provision, quality of service and customer satisfaction, and engagement with regulatory issues. Where decisions were tight, client feedback often helped settle the issue. The Risk.net editorial team thanks all this year’s participants for their time and help. The full list of winners, along with articles explaining our choices, can be found below. Awards currently with no link will be published shortly.

DERIVATIVES CATEGORIES

Derivatives house of the year: Citi

Interest rate derivatives house of the year: Citi

Currency derivatives house of the year: Bank of America

Equity derivatives house of the year: JP Morgan

Credit derivatives house of the year: Barclays

Inflation derivatives house of the year: Citi

Structured products house of the year: BNP Paribas

Risk solutions house of the year: BNP Paribas

QIS house of the year: JP Morgan

Flow market-maker of the year: Citadel Securities

INDIVIDUAL CATEGORIES

Lifetime achievement: Dennis McLaughlin

Quants of the year: Vladimir Lucic and Alex Tse

Buy-side quants of the year: Petter Kolm and Nick Westray

Rising star in quant finance: David Itkin

RISK MANAGEMENT CATEGORIES

Credit portfolio manager of the year: Standard Chartered

Sovereign risk manager of the year: The Ministry of Finance and Public Credit of the Republic of Colombia

INVESTING CATEGORIES

Investment house of the year: Manulife Investment Management

Hedge fund of the year: LMR Partners

MARKET STRUCTURE CATEGORIES

Exchange of the year: CME Group

Clearing house of the year: Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation

OTC trading platform of the year: Reactive Markets

SERVICE CATEGORIES

Derivatives client clearer of the year: Citi

Law firm of the year: Simmons & Simmons

TECHNOLOGY CATEGORIES

Technology vendor of the year: SS&C Algorithmics