The PDI Global Awards are the industry’s most prestigious honours.
Here are some handy tips on this year’s awards process:
What goes into our categories?
All award nominations are inherently subjective. Our choices account for a mixture of qualitative and quantitative criteria, including non-financial considerations, when selecting what goes into each category. We are looking for evidence of how active, but also how innovative, a firm has been.
We believe our award category labels are mostly self-explanatory, but do not hesitate to get in touch if you want to learn more about what comprises each. Put simply, there is not an exhaustive list we can give you, especially considering how new innovations crop up every year that often expand the boundaries of the asset class.
We can, however, give you a few pointers based on some broad categories:
Firm of the Year: This category tries to capture everything of note a manager has done over the preceding 12 months. This includes deals, capital formations and other noteworthy initiatives. We start with all activities closed or that have reached a conclusion within the 12-month period. But, unlike in other categories, we will consider initiatives, fundraisings and deals that have started, but not yet concluded. Also please note the following for this category:
- When looking at transactions, we place greater emphasis on deals where the group deployed capital – ie, was a buyer rather than a seller.
- Size is often an important factor, and larger fundraises and transactions will typically hold greater weight than smaller fundraises and transactions in the nominations process.
- Although deal or fundraising sizes do matter, we also look at other ways a particular transaction or fundraise may be significant, such as if it represents a milestone or a strategic move for the group.
- With the exception of extremely large deals, strategic investments (such as joint ventures where a group will be entering or expanding in a geographic market or sector through a series of investments) will hold greater weight than individual asset or portfolio transactions.
Fundraising of the Year: In this category, we are only looking at fundraising processes which have reached a close within the 12-month period under consideration. Fundraisings that have started or are still underway will be considered but generally carry less weight. Regional fundraisings will consider whether a fund will be invested significantly in the region for which it is being nominated. Non-discretionary and retail capital can be included in the total figure. If possible, please provide a breakdown of the capital raise – ie, discretionary versus non-discretionary, institutional versus retail.
What we want from your submissions
Be ‘brief and to the point’ is probably the best piece of advice we can offer. That means a maximum of 500 words per category you are submitting. Furthermore, we require you to send us individual submissions for each category. Finally, all submissions need to be sent in PDF format.
As to what goes into each submission, our key requirement is that you only submit information relevant to the category you are applying for and make it clear why your submission is relevant.
We also ask you to be as detailed as possible – mentioning asset or vehicle names, counterparties, relevant dates and other important information – and to clearly label what is confidential about your submissions, otherwise we reserve the right to use the content you submit in our writeups. On confidential items, please consider the value of submitting them if they cannot be included in our citations. One workaround is to state something as ‘non-attributable’.
What are the deadlines for 2024’s Awards?
Monday 28 October is our call for submissions
Friday 15 November is our deadline for submissions
March 2025 is when winners are announced
We haven’t specified a word count limit and instead say we would appreciate shorter, more succinct submissions – a blurb highlighting, for example, a firm’s five most important achievements in the past year would suffice.
