The IFR Awards Gala Dinner was held on Monday in the presence of Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal who attended in her role as patron of Save the Children.
To see the Flickr gallery of photos from the night – and download the photos – please click here.
The dinner was held at the Grosvenor House hotel in London with more than 650 guests in attendance, including Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence who accompanied Her Royal Highness.
The Princess Royal presented the trophy for Bank of the Year 2022 to Olivier Osty, head of global markets at BNP Paribas.
Jonny Gould did double duties with a bravura performance running the charity tombstone to raise funds for Save the Children and hosting the awards ceremony.
The awards were presented by IFR editor Matthew Davies.
Though 2022 was a difficult year for banks – and the start of 2023 has been even worse – attendees dug deep to raise just over £1m.
Among them was £200,000 from Citigroup, another massive donation from the US bank that has now donated a total of £1m over the past four years.
BNP Paribas secured the bookrunner slot with an extraordinary donation of £500,000. It was also the big winner of the night collecting six trophies across DCM, ECM, derivatives and sustainability, in addition to Bank of the Year.
Donations from individuals were also substantial at £54,667.
The Princess Royal spoke about the work of Save the Children and the importance of the banking community's support each year through the IFR Awards. Her Royal Highness was present for the first tombstone auction in January 1998 and has made the event part of her calendar ever since, missing only a couple of occasions in the intervening years. The tombstone is consistently the biggest single fundraising event for Save the Children and has raised over £31m to date.
The money goes in to Save the Children's flexible funds that allow the charity to respond immediately to crises around the world. In the past 12 months that has included responding to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, floods in Pakistan, famine in the Horn of Africa and the war in Ukraine.
Davies and deputy editor Owen Wild visited Uganda with Her Royal Highness and Sir Tim in October to see programmes part-funded by the IFR Awards. These included catch-up clubs to help children recover from lost learning due to school closures during coronavirus lockdowns, with the success of this programme meaning it is now being rolled out in other countries around the world.
