You inevitably run the risk of making more enemies than friends when you present achievement awards to your community of subscribers, especially when they are from the highly competitive investment banking industry and you have invited them all over for dinner together for the first time.

Thankfully, the reaction to the inaugural Telecom Finance Awards Dinner has been outstanding, far better than we could have hoped for in fact. We have been nurturing the Telecom Finance League Tables and Awards for the last five years and it was a proud moment to see them take their first steps in public. There is plenty of room for development, and we have already received some excellent suggestions on how to improve their growth. The market certainly looks ripe for a similarly upbeat celebration next year.

250 attendees

The Awards Dinner came at the end of the first day of the first Telecom Finance Conference, which set out to highlight the opportunities in the sector ahead. We have long believed that the unique Telecom Finance community of subscribers would be fantastically served by an opportunity to get together and discuss the issues we cover day to day in the news services. The conference proved that this was certainly the case, attracting over 250 senior executives and financial decision makers from the communications sector around the globe. The standard of the attendees was most impressive. While most of the telecom executives were either CEOs or CFOs, the majority of the investment bankers were of MD level. There were also many private equity investors and a range of influential professional intermediaries from legal experts to transaction services specialists, as well as other advisers. I have no doubt we will be writing about some of the deals they have put together at the conference in the coming months.