Hong Kong’s corporate governance advocate, David Webb, revealed his own set of alternative award winners at this year’s IFLR Asia Awards.
Accepting IFLR’s inaugural Market Reform Award at last week’s IFLR Asia Awards, Webb thanked the tycoons of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Government for giving him so much material, and so many economically irrational policies, to criticise on his blog, Webb-site.com.
A full list of winners from IFLR’s Asia Awards can be found here.
He also revealed his own set of alternative ‘raspberry award’ winners, which saw the PCCW Share-stapled business trust win ‘The Most Pointless Deal of the Year Award’. “The deal had all the features of a regular company with 10 times the complexity and effort,” said Webb. “We don’t expect to see many more like that.”
Hui Xian real estate investment trust IPO was awarded Webb’s ‘Someone Had To Go First Award’ for raising funds in an international market in a currency which is not freely convertible and then using it to repay offshore borrowings.
He nominated the Goldman Sachs warrant team for his ‘Divide Don’t Multiply Award for Mathematics in Finance’ for inverting the currency calculation in their Nikkei warrants.
Webb also awarded Standard Chartered’s equity team ‘The IPOs We Wish We Hadn’t Done/Can’t See the Wood for the Trees Award’ for the China Forestry Holdings IPO.