A £200 million deal doesn't sound that impressive, certainly not impressive enough to justify a global award. But the deal, a subordinated issue at the end of May for US credit card company MBNA, sums up the progress Deutsche Bank has made in recent years.
Just three years ago Deutsche was something of an also-ran in the asset-backed securities market. It had a decent franchise in Europe, though one rather dependent on self-issuance, while its US operation was little more than a niche player.
So the bank got hold of its chequebook and lured away most of CSFB's highly successful US asset-backed team, co-headed by Jorge Calderon and Phil Weingord.
Soon afterwards Calderon was promoted to global head of debt capital markets, and Weingord assumed full responsibility for asset-backed. Three years on it has become one of the predominant global ABS houses.
There aren't many of them. Only Citigroup and JPMorgan could join Deutsche in claiming to have a broad franchise across the major asset classes in both the US and Europe.
The real battle has been between Citigroup and Deutsche Bank in terms of market share and leadership in innovation.