You have one extra week to get your submissions in for the IJGlobal Awards 2020 – with the date for the Companies category having a hard close of 19 March.

We may keep the portal open – depending on desperate please from submitters – for the Deals category, but we have to call a hard stop on Companies as the shortlist will be announced in the spring issue of the IJGlobal Magazine.

To access the portal – CLICK HERE…

At the time of writing, we are pleased to report that there is no lack of uptake on submissions… but deadline extensions are so much part of the awards process that not to have one would cause palpitations in certain quarters.

Having said that, there remain a good number of submissions that have been started and need to be completed.

As an aide memoire, at IJ we have taken the view that it is important to create happiness in an otherwise dismal world so we have created a few “this year only” categories… that will definitely become regular features if they prove popular!

We 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 anyone to submit… it recognises the activity of a public body in, say, rolling out pipelines of deals
• ESG Coordinator – this role increasingly crops up in our database and warrants recognition
• Investor (enters deal at or just after FC) – this is for deals where equity comes in right at financial close or just after

From our side, we have been more open on the judging process than any other year and have identified the industry experts who will cast votes at their regional Judgment Day.

They are:

• Europe and 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 – for which 19 March is the hard deadline – include:

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

As to Sector Awards, we may hold the portal open a little longer to scoop up some extra submissions. This is less urgent as we do not announce the shortlist in the spring issue of the magazine.

We have separated out a few categories to encourage greater uptake and allow us to slice and dice sectors… which 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 Digital 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.

A good example of this can be seen in the Renewable Energy 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 now be accessed until 19 March here…