A happy New Year to all our readers and welcome to this Deals of the Year edition. The unique aspect of The Treasurer’s Deals of the Year is that these deals were evaluated from a purely corporate treasury perspective, and chosen on the basis of their ‘sound treasury management’.
The final selection is the culmination of a long process which began in July, when we started to ask the banks to nominate which deals they felt were the most interesting “from the treasurer’s point of view”. Not always an easy concept for some to grasp – particularly those who could not get away from the “biggest has to be best” ideal – but the list was generally very informative.
The Deals of the Year Panel, which comprised four practising treasurers, a retired treasurer, a banker, a corporate financier and an analyst, then had the unenviable task of sifting through the large number of nominations, to draw up a shortlist of deals which they felt were the best in each category.
The November 2003 issue included six of the best in each of the six categories and readers were invited to vote for the deals they felt were best, based on the criteria we set: sound treasury management, optimal or innovative structure, efficient pricing or demonstrating relative success in prevailing market conditions.
The Panel then reconvened to decide the winning deals in each category, based on the above criteria and the votes received for those deals. You can see the winning deals, together with a detailed write-up of how the treasurers and their advisers put them together, on page 39. Congratulations to all those involved in the winning deals. The process for Deals of the Year is an ongoing one, so if you are aware of an exceptional corporate deal which demonstrates the requirements shown by this year’s winning deals, please let me know, and provide as much background as you can.
On a sombre note, all of us at the ACT were very saddened to learn of the death over Christmas of David Harrison , who was a good friend of the ACT and had been a member for 20 years. Our condolences to his family and friends. A tribute to David will follow in the March issue.
MIKE HENIGAN
Publisher
