The winners of our Awards for Excellence 2014 will be announced in Frankfurt on 14 May at a special reception on the eve of the ICMA Covered Bond Investor Council & The Covered Bond Report conference, and we would like to invite nominations for the honours.

MainNizza: We hope to see many of you there on 14 May

Last May we announced the winners of our inaugural Awards for Excellence (see here for the roll of honour) and we will be following the same procedure this year, with the recipients of our awards chosen by The Covered Bond Report’s editorial team. We will nevertheless be surveying the opinion of a broad cross-section of market participants.

We would therefore welcome nominations for our awards, whether for your own activities or on behalf of those you consider deserving of recognition. This can be in the form of a phone call, an e-mail, or even a PowerPoint presentation…

Under consideration are the following categories, many of which were recognised last year:

• Issuer

• Lead Manager (euros, dollars and other)

• New Issue (euros, dollars and other)

• Innovation

• Investor relations

• Research

• Regulation

Last year our ultimate roll of honour did not feature all of the above and included some others, and we again reserve the right to add or remove categories. Perhaps it makes sense to have best peripheral and best core issuer awards rather than sticking to euros and dollars. Maybe we have forgotten about an area of expertise, practice or niche that is fundamental to or an important part of covered bonds but in danger of going unrecognised – is there an unsung hero out there?

As the name suggests, the raison d’être of our awards is to recognise excellence in covered bonds and this will be prioritised above sticking to traditional categories.

We therefore ask that you show some imagination and make the case for your favoured deals and institutions of the past 12 months. We look forward to hearing from you, by Thursday, April 17 at the latest.

Please contact Neil Day with your nominations via nday@coveredbondreport.com or on +44 20 7428 9575, along with any questions about the process.

Our thoughts on why last year’s winners deserved to be recognised can be found here.