Our annual schlep around town to hear bankers pitch their deals is always insightful, and not just in considering the eventual winners. There are few better ways to fully appreciate the kind of year the street has had than to go ask the street itself and this year was no different.
To most outsiders, 2011 was a full-blown annus horribilis for the investment banking industry. But the general rule in awards pitches is to minimise the negative and, as such, many of our meetings this year followed a familiar pattern. “We made our own luck,” bankers told us over and again, while maintaining that the rest of the street was...