Here are a few pieces of advice that apply to all attendees of award ceremonies.
First, if you are that way inclined, it helps to be a little bit tipsy. Not drunk. It is no good walking onstage sozzled, lurching from side to side, embarrassing your employer. But it is useful to have a little bit of wine inside you to help you sit through dozens, occasionally hundreds, of awards that often plumb the depths of specificity.
Second, speeches should be avoided at all costs. This is simple mathematics. Although it might be tempting for an individual award winner to make a speech of a few minutes, the precedent they set will ensure the flock of winners that follow will do the same. A two-hour ceremony will then extend into a four-hour one, with each award getting noticeably less applause from an exhausted audience.
Third, bring along a junior staff member with strength, endurance and the willingness to schlep. You'll need someone to be responsible for getting all those shiny trophies home safely — often via a circuitous tour of bars and clubs that bankers visit after the awards ceremony breaks up and they head off into the night to celebrate.
Past experience teaches us that these juniors need to be reliable and preferably teetotal. You don’t want your award being left behind in a seedy establishment.
I’m certainly not saying that some of the people the intrepid bankers meet in such bars do not have talents — but surely they don’t deserve to carry home a best bank gong.