No prizes for plain talking in awards season

No doubt your bank has roped you into that annual beauty parade known as awards season, when you are required to talk at great length about all the reasons why a deal you spent nine months putting together — and which cost you your second marriage — deserves to scoop a prize. You have to put all this effort in to persuade some hack, who you hope knows his convertible bond from his project financing, to give you a piece of perspex that you can then wave in your rivals' faces.