Although we have had to cancel our conference this year, we will be announcing the winners of The Covered Bond Report Awards for Excellence online from 7 July (pushed back from 30 June), and would therefore like to receive your nominations as we begin our deliberations.

The aim of the 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 (1 June 2019-31 May 2020).

Our choice of winners will, as previously, be driven by the greatest achievements, rather than by sticking to predetermined categories. As a hypothetical example: if there are three euro benchmarks that are far more deserving of recognition than any dollar benchmark, we may reward the former at the expense of designating any winner in dollars.

We nevertheless anticipate giving out awards in traditional categories such as “best lead manager” and “deal of the year”, so as a helpful guide for your nominations, here is a list of the types of categories/activities we might ultimately recognise:

● Issuer: issuance, investor relations

● Lead manager: euros, dollars and other currencies

● New issue: by currency; debut; comeback

● ESG, innovation, structuring, liquidity, pioneer…

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

http://news.coveredbondreport.com/2019/06/the-cbr-2019-awards-for-excellence-the-winners/

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

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.

Clearly the impact of Covid-19 will split our qualification period in two, but we will do our best to give due consideration to pre-crisis achievements that may now feel somewhat dated, while bearing in mind the challenges that recent activity has had to overcome.

You can put forward yourselves and your deals, or others and their achievements – via e-mail or a phone call – by 2 July at the very latest (pushed back from 26 June).

Over the coming weeks we will be engaging with a broad cross-section of market participants to discuss the merits of candidates. But 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 7483 4633 (working from home).