One week remains for submissions to be completed for the IJGlobal Awards 2020 and we are delighted to confirm that there has already been significant uptake… though there are quite a few entries that still need to be completed… and we want more.

We have set next Friday – 12 March (2021) – as the official date for the portal to close for submissions, and encourage you all to act now to avoid disappointment.

To access the portal – CLICK HERE…

We at IJ have taken the view that – with so little to celebrate in such a challenging (yet curiously industrious) year – we need to make our own happiness… and what makes people happier than winning an award?

To that end, we have rolled out a few more award categories (for this year only… unless they are really popular) and would like to draw your attention to them:

• Credit Insurer – back by popular demand, we want to celebrate wrapping… everything from monolines to ECAs
• Public Sector Awards – open to public bodies to submit… or for organisations to submit on their behalf when particularly impressed by their activity (say rolling out pipelines of deals)
• ESG Coordinator – another one appearing by popular demand. This role increasingly crops up in our database and warrants recognition as it’s here to stay… and growing
• Investor (enters deal at or just after FC) – this is for deals where equity comes in right at financial close or just after (within a couple of weeks)

From our side, we have been more open on the judging process than any other year and have identified all the judges on each of the teams that will cast votes on their regional Judgment Day.

We published stories on each of them:

• Europe & Africa
• Asia Pacific
• North America
• Latin America
• Middle East & North Africa

As to the majority of the awards being judged, they are much the same as previous years. The Company Award categories include:

• MLA
• Bond Arranger
• DFI
• Sponsor
• Grantor
• Financial Adviser
• Legal Adviser
• Technical Adviser
• Ratings Agency
• Corporate Trust
• Insurance Adviser
• Model Auditor
• Tax Adviser

As to Sector Awards, we have separated out a few to encourage greater uptake and allow us to slice and dice in a year when some of the more traditional infra categories have not been so active. This also reflects market activity.

Two categories that will stand out are:

• Battery Storage
• Digital Infrastructure

Battery Storage speaks for itself, but the Digital Infrastructure one – which could be confused with Telecoms – has been rolled out to allow submitters the flexibility to draw the judging committees’ attention to innovative deals that might be a bit Core+ but are fascinating.

We have fielded a number of questions on the Digi Infra category where people are agonising between it and Telecoms, and our advice would be… if you can’t make up your mind, submit under one or the other and we will decide!

The other sectors that you would traditionally see are:

• Oil & Gas
• Power
• Renewables
• Transport
• Social Infra
• Mining
• Petrochemicals
• Telecoms
• Water
• Refinancing
• Export Finance

In the Refinancing category, we reserve the right to divide this across all sectors… as in refi in social infra, refi in renewables, refi in mining, etc.

We always do this and it reflects the number of submissions we receive which is a healthy barometer for market activity in the last calendar year.

A good example of this can be seen in the Renewables category. If we receive enough offshore wind farms in Europe, we will hive it off and judge onshore wind separately.

Another example would be that in the APAC region, we could separate out floating solar PV and give this an award, independent of more traditional solar farms that are ground-mounted.

The submissions portal can be accessed until 12 March here…