When we conceived our inaugural Awards for Excellence, we did so with a desire to celebrate the best of the covered bond market. After much deliberation, we chose 11 winners.

Notable among these are institutions that have been at the sharp end of the crisis, either directly or indirectly. As one head of covered bonds put it: “We think a deal from a peripheral country deserves the award for best deal since it’s the best evidence of the beauty of the covered bond instrument. Moreover, access of peripheral issuers was the story of the past 12 months.”

However, we would have to disagree with his follow-up: “When core issuers launch tighter or bigger deals,” he added, “it’s a bit like when the 100m record is improved by 0.01s.”

Try telling that to US athletics legend Carl Lewis. Indeed if we are seeking those who are pushing the boundaries of the covered bond market, we must look at those who are willing to go outside their comfort zone and reach for new levels.

Meanwhile, although no-one in their right mind would have wished for the crisis that has afflicted the globe for more than five years now, the difficulties that have been faced have inspired innovations and initiatives that would otherwise not have come about, and two of these are among our winners.

A few words on how we arrived at our selection:

Most importantly, however much input we may have received from outside – and we did our best to hear the market’s views – the final decision was ultimately ours alone.

We gave ourselves the maximum flexibility in the process with a view to letting those institutions and deals deserving of recognition drive our categories rather than vice versa. The main concrete criterion was the period under consideration: April 2012 to March 2013.

Our ultimate selection is weighted towards issuers, which we feel is valid considering their number relative to the ranks of lead managers, law firms and regulators. It is also difficult to separate out individual deals from issuers’ overall strategies, which explains why more issuers than deals are recognised.

We have confined our awards to those areas where we are confident our process and ability to survey the market within our given time frame have allowed us to reach a justified and justifiable result. This explains, for example, the lack of a research award, which we feel requires a different process.

We have in some categories alongside the winners designated as “highly commended” certain institutions or deals that either might have triumphed had they not faced competition from our chosen winners, or had a sufficiently strong case that we felt they deserved to be recognised.

While we are confident that the winners are deserving recipients of our awards, we are the first to admit that there may well be others we have missed as a result of the depth and breadth of the market. Hopefully next year we will be able to uncover a broader range of winners.

In the meantime, we hope you will share in celebrating this year’s winners.