IFR Awards Gala Dinner photos

IFR has been giving out awards for more than a quarter of a century, but the glittering event we now host is in its 17th year. Almost 1,200 people packed into the Grosvenor House Hotel in London to attend this year’s dinner, which has become the marquee event in the global capital markets calendar. We have printed a selection of photos from the evening in the following pages. The presentation of the IFR Awards makes this an important evening for capital markets professionals, but it is also one of the most important dates on the calendar for...

For Save the Children, the generous donations made by the investment banking community during the prestigious IFR Awards during the past 17 years have put the sector squarely in the middle of the philanthropic hero role. During this time the awards have raised a staggering amount for our work, helping to achieve dramatic changes for the most vulnerable children across the world. It’s a phenomenal achievement, and on January 18 this year it culminated in a donation of £1.26m to push the total above the £20m mark. I know all too well how...

The time (T) between the receipt of an IFR award (A) and the slippery slope to doom (D) and ignominy (I) – for those that succumb – seems to be in the order of two years plus, so framing an equation to account for this might go something along the lines of:T(D,I) ≥ A+2 Take Lehman Brothers. The bank had, of course, won IFR’s coveted Bank of the Year award in 2002. But because that was almost six years before the mighty conflagration that consumed Lehman and much of the financial world in September 2008, we’re more than comfortable with that...

IFR JOURNALISTS AND editors spend November each year trailing around the world’s financial capitals giving even the longest shot a chance to pitch and tell us why they deserve recognition. It is a chance to sit and spend a few hours with heads of businesses and chew the fat over the highs and lows of the year – while they also take a few swipes at the assumed opposition. The IFR pitch is often the only time of the year that the heads of different regions and asset classes, along with the rainmakers, actually sit in the same room. It is also the...

In the early days of the IFR Awards there were very few awards; the write-ups took up just a few pages in the magazine and the awards were given out in our offices to no great fanfare over a few glasses of wine with a very small group of attendees. How times have changed. The IFR Review of the Year that is now published each year and the gala awards dinner that attracts 1,200 attendees are huge undertakings that take months of planning. The substantial annual reviews of the capital markets kicked off in earnest in 1989 with a Review of the...