The Covered Bond Report will be giving out inaugural Awards for Excellence in May, recognising market participants leading the way in the covered bond market.

Unlike in football, Spain may not win everything

The recipients of our awards will be chosen by The Covered Bond Report.

We will consult with a broad variety of market participants before coming to our decisions and will be open to receiving pitches for the awards, but for the time being we would like to hear from you if you have any suggestions regarding the process and a provisional list of awards.

Our accolades will be dubbed Awards for Excellence for two reasons. Firstly, they will reward excellence (duh!). And secondly, there is no reliable objective method for us to decide who is “best” in any meaningful way (our league tables can be found here).

The recipients of our awards will therefore be those who have achieved, in the year leading up to the awards, through one or many activities, something that we believe is worth recognising and celebrating. Upon announcing the awards we will give, in brief, our reasons.

We may also recognise others through “highly commended” accolades in certain categories, which, again, are not aimed at identifying the second best player, but rather another worthy achievement, or which could recognise a party that has shown much improvement.

This is our provisional list of categories:

• Issuance strategy

• Lead management

• Individual deal execution

• Dependability (issuers)

• Investor relations/transparency

• Innovation

• Legal advisory

• Research

• Regulatory

Hopefully it is clear which activities and virtues we are trying to capture through these categories. We will nevertheless endeavour to refine our categories and thinking before beginning our decision-making on the awards (“Dependability” may need some work, for example).

Please let us have any thoughts or suggestions on any aspect of this (apart from nominations, for now, please) by mailing us at editorial@coveredbondreport.com.