Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta
Ghana has been adjudged as the Best African Issuer of bonds in this year’s Global Capital Bonds Awards.
Ghana was trailed by Morocco and Africa Finance Corporation, which placed second and third respectively in the award held virtually in London.
Unlike the past 12 years where the awards ceremony had been held in London with awards dinner in May, this year’s was done virtually in September due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Charles Adu Boahen, a Deputy Minister of Finance, also came second for the “most impressive African Funding official”. He came second to one Abdelhakim Jouahri, from Morocco, and was trailed at third by Banji Fehintola, from the Africa Finance Corporation.
Robust economies
A document announcing the list of awardees said, “working remotely, often under difficult conditions; meeting by video; pitching, pricing and trading bonds without the physical infrastructure and personal touch that offices bring,” is one of the changes the world has to get used to due to the virus.
It added that the Covid-19, notwithstanding, the primary debt capital markets’ response to the crisis has been resilient and robust.
“Institutions all over the world from governments and multilateral development banks, to domestic lenders, to companies have raised vital financing to see them through this extraordinary period,” it said.
“Central banks’ inflated quantitative easing programmes and relaxed capital regulations have helped them, while governments have created vast support programmes. But the capital markets have answered the call for urgent help, facilitating fiscal spending and enabling QE programmes to keep the global economy from unthinkable consequences,” it added.
About the awards
The GlobalCapital’s Bond Awards are the only awards that recognise achievement in all the main segments of the international bond markets through a poll of market participants, thus, truly reflecting the opinion of the market.
The awards perform a valuable function, enabling the market to reflect on what worked and what did not in the past year and celebrating the most impressive performers.
The basis of the poll is that issuers vote for the best investment banks, while banks vote for issuers. Other market participants such as investors, law firms and rating agencies can also vote for and receive awards.
The awards cover supranational, sovereign and agency; financial institution; investment grade corporate and emerging market bonds.
The principles of the poll are that people cannot vote for themselves or their own institutions (except in the Most Valuable Player Awards).
People vote on firms that they interact with, not their own competitors (except in the Most Valuable Player Awards and the Emerging Market Bank Awards, where banks are invited to vote for each other). There is one vote per institution in each category and there is no collusion or favours.
Even though the Bond Awards happen every year in May, following a market poll that takes place in the first quarter, the organisers, this year, after opening the poll in February as usual, re-launched them to cover an extended period between March 2019 and June 2020.
Stakeholders in the market were invited to consider their peers’ performance over that whole duration. New awards were also added to cover the extraordinary work brought about by the coronavirus, such as Best Bank for Funding Advice and Support During Covid-19 Pandemic.
“By extending the voting period to the end of June, we captured the second quarter — a period of extraordinary turbulence and high volumes of issuance that will surely be seen as the salient part of the year — adding to the credibility and importance of this year’s awards,” a document released by the organisers of the award said.
Awardees
Other awardees include Italy that won Most Impressive Sovereign Funding Team, beating UK and Spain; Barclays that won Most Impressive SSA House in Sterling, beating NatWest Markets and RBC Capital Markets; Bank of America that won Best Arranger of Covid-19 Bonds, beating Crédit Agricole and Citigroup; JP Morgan won Most Impressive Syndicate Team for SSA Bonds beating HSBC and Bank of America; the World Bank won Most Impressive SSA Issuer Funding Strategy During Covid-19 Pandemic, beating Spain and Italy; African Development Bank won Best Issuer of Covid-19 Bonds, among other list of winners.
Source: dailystatesman.com.gh/Kwasi Frimpong
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