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Award ceremonies are a time to drink, catch up with old friends and brag about the success of your business and your team. And for old retirees like me, it appears to be the time to put your foot into your mouth.

The chair of the supervisory board of the European Central Bank, Danièle Nouy, is absolutely correct in regretting that so much European financial regulation has been done in the form of directives.

The UK has some of the world’s best regulators, but has ended up with some of the most poorly designed regulation. John Vickers’ criticism of the Bank of England shows why politicised regulation can be a problem.

A former European Central Bank president has reiterated his suggestion that the European Parliament should be the final arbiter in disputes between member nations and Europe’s institutions. But that will do little to stop the big boys throwing their weight around — and would be far from a democratic process.

India is finally set to welcome its first publicly listed infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs), with GMR Infrastructure and IRB Infrastructure Developers having officially asked the Securities and Exchange Board of India for approval to create and list their respective vehicles. But while the first deals are certainly welcome, much more needs to be done for the asset class to have a strong foundation.

After two years of promoting renminbi internationalisation at full speed, Chinese regulators have put on the brakes as they go to extraordinary lengths to stop the currency leaving the country. Could RMB internationalisation become RMB re-nationalisation in 2016?

It may have been one of the tougher years to execute a transaction in Asia ex-Japan, but there was plenty of innovation and interest in 2015 across loans, equities and bonds. After considering a bumper selection of awards pitches from firms across the region, we have picked our standout transactions. Our thanks to all those firms that took the time to pitch. Full write-ups of each award will be published in the next Asiamoney supplement in late March.

Last week the loan market gathered for the highly-anticipated 13th Syndicated Loan, Leveraged Finance and Private Placement Awards (otherwise known as the GlobalCapital loans awards) for a night of awards and tales of adventure.

On Tuesday night the loan market gathered in all its finery to hear the winners of the 13th Syndicated Loan, Leveraged Finance and Private Placement Awards at the Guildhall, in London. The results are below.

The sell-off in European banks is terrifying and baffling, all at the same time. GlobalCapital would be first to admit there are still issues — poor growth, weak balance sheets, non-performing loans, defered tax assets, complex forms of untested capital cooked up in regulatory labs – but the continent’s biggest banks aren’t going anywhere. For one thing, they are still too big to fail.

Europe’s banks, with a few notable exceptions, have yet to be hit hard with claims of unethical dealing. But that is likely to change. Thanks to a quirk of the European regulatory system, supervisors need to find some misselling before it is too late.

BNP Paribas has impressive targets for cutting costs and increasing capital, after outshining some of its major competitors by posting a full year profit. But it needs to tell a compelling story about how it plans to hit them.