IFR Asia Awards 2024: Call for entries

We are inviting banks to pitch for the IFR Asia Awards 2024.

The awards year runs from January 1 to December 31.

We will use a mix of video and in-person pitches to enable maximum participation by our team around the region.

The winners will be announced at ifre.com on February 5 2025 and in the Review of the Year supplement dated February 8 2025. We plan to present the awards in Hong Kong on April 15 2025.

To help with our selections, banks, advisers and issuers may submit brief written presentations along with supporting data. IFR journalists will also organise pitch meetings. Pitching is entirely optional and consideration for an award will not be limited to advisers or issuers that participate in this way.

All written pitches should reach us by November 1, with pitch meetings in late October to November.

We will continue to monitor the market until the end of the year and banks may submit addenda to include significant deals that price after submitting their pitches.

In your presentations for house awards you may want to summarise achievements in the awards year. For instance:

• How has your institution progressed over the course of the year?
• What strategic goals have been met?
• How have they been achieved?
• In what ways has your institution adapted to the trends that have driven market activity during the year?
• How has your institution supported clients through market volatility?
• What has been noteworthy about your deal roster, whether in terms of size, geographical and/or sectoral diversification, degree of innovation or complexity?

Presentations should include individual summaries of the main relevant transactions. Separate documents should be submitted for each major asset class.

Submissions for Asia-Pacific categories should be sent to daniel.stanton@lseg.com. Please indicate for which awards you are pitching, giving appropriate contact details.

Final selections will be made by the senior editorial team.

Guidance for submissions

– The IFR Asia Awards are totally independent from the commercial side of our business. You do not need to spend money on advertising to be considered for an award, and you will not be required to buy an advert if you win. Our salespeople do not know the results of the awards until they are published, and they have no influence over the decisions. There is no charge for submissions.

– Lengthy submissions are not required. Two pages for one deal submission should be enough.

– There is a limit of one submission in each deal category.

– Deals must be completed during the awards year from January 1 to December 31. Please check with the IFR team before submitting a deal if you are unsure whether it is eligible. Work on restructuring and M&A deals may have begun in a previous year, but must be formally completed during the awards period.

– Deals completed after the awards submission date but within the awards year may be added, subject to consultation with the asset class editor.

– If you are pitching for one of the regional house awards, please submit photographs of the top executives. Winners may have caricatures used for their awards stories. Please supply pre-approved quotes from top executives on the themes of the year and the areas where the bank excelled. We will only use these in an awards article if the bank wins.

– Please provide contact emails for bankers and issuers so that we can notify them if they win. We welcome the chance to speak to issuers about their deals during the awards process, too. If it is not possible to hold a physical awards dinner we will need to obtain postal addresses for the winners.

– IFR Asia reserves the right to drop any category during the judging process.

– Banks do not need to be active across the whole region to be eligible for regional house awards.

– The Bank of the Year award is given to the best Asia Pacific ex-Japan division of an international investment bank.

– The Asian Bank of the Year of the award is given to the best investment bank continually headquartered in Asia Pacific ex-Japan. It does not need to cover the whole region or every capital market asset class, but it needs to be the best at what it does.

– Structured equity transactions count towards a bank’s performance in the Equity House category. Structured equity comprises convertible and exchangeable bonds and sukuk.

– The Structured Finance Deal award is awarded to the best securitisation transaction.

– This year, the High Yield Bond award will also cover Asian local currency transactions.

– Country House awards can include inbound and outbound transactions. For example, the China Equity House awards could capture the listing of a Chinese company in the US, as well as the A-share listing of a European company.

– The turnaround deal is for a capital markets transaction, or series of transactions within a short timeframe, which improved a company’s balance sheet and financial strength. This includes debt restructuring deals, but a company does not have to default in order to qualify for the turnaround deal award. Transactions should pass any necessary stakeholder votes within the awards period.

– IFR’s global awards presented in London include Japanese yen deals and some Asia Pacific categories. Please check ifre.com for the full list.

– If your bank is regionally integrated, it makes sense to do a group submission and awards pitch instead of separate submissions from different units.

– One hour is usually enough for an awards pitch meeting. If you think you need more time than this, please discuss with the IFR team. Not every bank that submits for the awards will be asked to pitch.

– The pitch meetings are interactive and we like to have a two-way discussion, so please be prepared to answer questions about particular deals and general strategy. We suggest banks should tell us what was interesting about their deals or why they were challenging.

– IFR Asia will cite LSEG league tables in our decision-making.

– We can arrange for the awards discussions to be off the record, if requested.

– We do not use a matrix or set of KPIs to judge the categories. Our reporters cover the markets day in, day out and use their own judgement in deciding the winners. Often, they have already begun to form an opinion from talking to bankers and issuers throughout the year.

– Awards stories can be shared on social media as long as they are attributed to IFR Asia. Winners can go to ifrasiaawards.com/logos.php to download a file of the awards logo.

REGIONAL AWARDS

Bank of the Year

Asian Bank of the Year

Issuer of the Year

Bond House

Investment-Grade Bond

Domestic Bond

High-Yield Bond House

High-Yield Bond

Loan House

Loan

Equity House

Equity Issue

Structured Equity House

Structured Equity Issue

ESG House

ESG Deal

Structured Finance Issue

Frontier Markets Issue

Best Islamic Deal

Turnaround Deal

COUNTRY AWARDS

Australia/New Zealand Bond House

Australia/New Zealand Equity House

Australia/New Zealand Loan House

China Bond House

China Equity House

Renminbi Bond

China Loan House

Hong Kong Equity Issue

India Bond House

India Equity House

India Loan House

India Capital Markets Deal

Indonesia Capital Markets Deal

Malaysia Bond House

Malaysia Capital Markets Deal

Philippines Capital Markets Deal

Singapore Bond House

Singapore Capital Markets Deal

South Korea Capital Markets Deal

South-East Asia Loan House

Taiwan Loan House

Thailand Bond House

Thailand Capital Markets Deal