We will be handing out The Covered Bond Report’s 2019 Awards for Excellence at the annual Covered Bond Investor Conference in Frankfurt on 27 June, and would like to know who you feel deserves to receive one of this year’s honours.

The aim of The CBR awards is to recognise those deals, institutions and initiatives that have been best in class or contributed to the development of covered bonds over the past year (starting from June 2018).

So although we expect to give out awards in categories such as “best lead manager” and “best deal”, we will ultimately base the number and selection of awards on who and what deserves to be recognised.

For example, we have not awarded a “best dollar house” in years when there has been only limited supply and no standout bank. And some activity almost defies categorisation but deserves to be recognised.

We nevertheless understand that pointers might be helpful, so these are some of the categories we might typically consider:

Issuer: issuance, transparency, investor relations

Lead manager: euros, dollars and other currencies

New issue: euros, dollars and other currencies

Innovation, debut, pioneer…

The categories we designated last year and the respective winners can be found here:

http://news.coveredbondreport.com/2018/06/the-cbr-2018-awards-for-excellence-the-winners/

We also reserve an Editor’s Award for recognising either market initiatives or contributions to the covered bond cause over a longer period of time by an individual or institution.

So please let us have your nominations regarding who or what deserves to be recognised for excellence in the covered bond market in the past year.

You can put forward yourselves and your deals, or others and their achievements – via e-mail or a phone call – by 24 May at the very latest.

We already have several candidates in mind, but are keen to hear your thoughts in a year when there have been plenty of blow-outs and deciding on a winner of deal of the year, for example, may be tricky.

Over the next couple of weeks will be engaging with a broad cross-section of market participants to discuss the merits of nominees. However, the ultimate winners will be decided by The Covered Bond Report.

Please contact managing editor Neil Day with your nominations or any questions: nday (at) coveredbondreport.com or on +44 20 7625 2175.

You can find out about and register for the conference here:

https://www.icmagroup.org/events/covered-bond-investor-conference-2019/

We hope to see you there!

Photo: Last year’s Editor’s Award winners, National Bank of Greece