The major feature of this year’s December edition is Deals of the Year. After a process which began in earnest in June, the Deals of the Year Panel, and in particular Joanna Parker, has sifted through an enormous amount of background information and data to come up with the final selection. All our readers had their chance to vote for their own favourites in the October issue and we were delighted to be able to announce the final list in the full glare of the Association’s Annual Dinner on 13 November.
Our unique selling point is that we have selected the deals not on the basis purely of biggest and best, but on the merits of the deal as a treasurer would see it. You can see the results, and Joanna’s detailed write-ups and interviews with those at the sharp end, on page 37.
We are already in the process of monitoring the best deals since October this year for next year’s feature. I would encourage any of you who are involved in deals, whether on the corporate side or with a banker’s perspective, to let us know as soon as it happens if you have done a particularly interesting deal. Our regular debt and equity coverage is quite extensive: our Bonds, Loans and Equities tables provide a selection of deals each month (the intention is not to say that these are the best of the month, more to provide an indication of what sort of deals are being done). We do cover deals as case studies from time to time and have regular updates on the state of the market. If you have any suggestions as to how we can improve our coverage (during the year and as part of Deals of the Year), please let me know.
The (other) main highlight of the Annual Dinner was the excellent speech by Sir Edward George. The ACT is proud to have had him speak in both his first year of tenure as Governor of the Bank of England and his last. For those of you who missed it, the text of his speech is reproduced on page 33.
We also include our regular year-end features, including economic forecasts from our Wise Men, forecasts for the debt and equities markets from a selection of experts, and of course a crossword and quiz.
I would like to wish all our readers a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Please do not be offended by not receiving Christmas cards from any of your contacts at the ACT – we have again agreed instead to make a donation to Crisis, a charity for the homeless www.crisis.org.uk.
Finally, readers should be aware that because of the extended Christmas break, your copy of the January 2003 issue won’t be reaching you until the middle of January. For those of you interested in project finance, I can assure you it will be worth the wait.
MIKE HENIGAN
Managing Editor