The 14 Heroes and 20 Villains Of 2012

HEROES

BNP Paribas - The IFR Bank of the Year

Bradley Birkenfeld - the former UBS private banker who received $104m in whistleblowing payouts related to his evidence against the firm (even though he did prison time for his own part in the alleged wrongdoing) 

Lloyd Blankfein - the CEO of Goldman Sachs who supported marriage equality, has been advising on the dangers of the U.S fiscal cliff, and still found time to go to a benefit concert last week

Canadian banks - all the major Canadian banks weathered the financial crisis relatively well, and this year have delivered strong earnings

Mark Carney - the Governor-elect of The Bank of England

Larry Fink - the irrepressible CEO of BlackRock, who has built one of the best financial services firms in the world. Fink has also been talked of as a possible candidate for U.S Treasury Secretary

The 70 executives promoted to Partner at Goldman Sachs

Richard Handler - the CEO at Jefferies who signed off cash bonuses for staff for their work in 2012

Stephen Hester - the CEO of The Royal Bank of Scotland, who is doing an impossible job exceedingly well

ICAP - The firm raised £11m worldwide on its 20th annual Charity Day earlier this month, bringing the total amount raised through ICAP Charity Day, which started in 1993, to more than £100m

Sallie Krawcheck - despite seemingly making a career out of losing senior jobs, the 'last honest analyst' is now a front-runner to become Chairman of the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission

Hector Sants - the former CEO of UK securites regulator is joining Barclays in a newly created role as Head of Compliance and Government and Regulatory Relations

The Securities and Exchange Commission - despite the critics, the U.S. agency has started to get its act together, and is making life difficult for financial professionals who have crossed the line

Elizabeth Warren - the U.S. financial services consumer champion has now been elected to the Senate, and a position on the Banking Committee

VILLAINS

Kweku Adoboli - the former UBS trader who received a 7 year jail sentence for the unauthorised trades that caused the firm a $2.3bn loss

Vince Cable - just for being Vince Cable

Bob Diamond - the former CEO of Barclays who carred the can for the bank's LIBOR problems

Brady Dougan - Credit Suisse's CEO has struggled to convince the doubters that he is the man to restore the firm to former glories. The bank's stock price is down around 40% over the last 2 years.

Jamie Dimon - JPMorgan Chase's CEO famously described the trading losses at the firm's London CIO unit as a 'tempest in a teapot'. The losses look to have maxed out at $6.2bn

Fred Goodwin - who was stripped of his Knighthood for leading Royal Bank of Scotland to bailout

Stephen Green - the former HSBC Group CEO and then Chairman who was in charge of the bank during a time when it stands accused of allowing itself to be used to launder billions of dollars for drug barons and potential terrorists

Rajat Gupta - the former Goldman Sachs director who was sentenced to 2 years in prison (subject to appeal) after being found to have passed inside information to his friend, hedge fund co-founder Raj Rajaratnam

Bruno Iksil - the so-called London Whale, the trader who is alleged to have been behind the trades at JPMorgan's London CIO unit which lost $6.2bn

The person responsible for the rogue computer program that caused Knight Capital to lose $440m, and almost broke the firm

The LIBOR traders from a number of firms who stand accused of manipulating interest rates

Peter Madoff - the brother of Bernie, who finally admitted that he helped pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history

Nomura Holdings for being dragged into insider trading scandals, which caused the resignation of CEO Kenichi Watanabe

John Paulson - whose hedge funds have had a difficult year

Raj Rajarathnam - the co-founder of hedge fund Galleon Group, who is currently serving 11 years for securities fraud and conspiracy

The Rochdale Securities trader who allegedly made over $1bn in unauthorised bets in Apple stock. The losses have threatened the very existence of the firm

The former employees of SAC Capital who have dragged the firm into an insider trading scandal

Greg Smith - the former Goldman Sachs VP who resigned via a New York Times OpEd, but failed to provide any specifics to his general claims

Standard Chartered - the bank that paid hundreds of millions in fines to settle U.S. compliance failures in respect of payments made to Iran

Russell Wasendorf Sr - the former CEO of Peregrine Financial Group who admitted to stealing at least $100m from his firm, and now faces up to the possibility of life in prison