Three years after the UK rail infrastructure provider’s first issue, the company has fixed itself in investors’ minds with the largest non-government index-linked bond ever. There’s more to come.

Here are the bond issuers that have taken the market by storm over the past 12 months: from the IFC, punching above its weight within the World Bank group with its pioneering work in developing local bond markets, to Bayer’s use of innovative methods to maintain its credit profile while making acquisitions.

What connects the world's best borrowers in 2005? Their ability to secure attractive funding through innovative structures or reaching out to new markets, often when the conditions are not in their favour.

As Euromoney's annual awards show, best borrowers come in all shapes and sizes, winning acclaim because of their investor appeal, tight pricing, good timing, or structural ingenuity. But, as Kathryn Tully reports, activists on the buy side are developing a more formal view of the basics of an investor-friendly issuer.

Primary debt capital markets picked up so significantly in May that some bankers felt able to forecast a bumper crop of issuance for the year. But with macro events so unpredictable they weren't betting their all on that outcome.

Euromoney profiles those sovereign, agency, corporate, high yield, financial and securitization issuers that have best coped with the unprecedented volatility in international capital markets in the past year. Our writers look at Europe, Asia and the Americas.

The highly volatile debt capital markets of the past 12 months have provided an extraordinary set of challenges to borrowers, whether they be highly experienced and well-rated issuers or less creditworthy newcomers.

It's been a tough year for many borrowers in the international capital markets. Corporate issuers in particular have fallen quickly from grace, having been the market's darlings a year ago. Now fixed income investors across the world are increasingly risk-averse. Certain sectors of the primary markets, US high yield for example, are very difficult to access. In response to these troubles, many of those borrowers that bankers and investors have nominated to be awarded for their efforts in the past 12 months have reverted to a strategy first made popular by Fannie Mae two years ago. They are striving to produce large, liquid benchmark issues that will at least give investors the comfort that they can easily trade in and out.

BEST JAPANESE BORROWER

As our awards show, the world's best borrowers have turned adversity to their advantage.

The European Investment Bank, Euromoney's borrower of the year, is snapping at the World Bank's heels with careful timing and improved investor relations. Russia, best debut borrower, excited the market with its $1 billion and Dm2 billion opening salvos. While the experienced team in Buenos Aires makes Argentina our top emerging market borrower a few lines.

The techniques that constitute state-of-the-art borrowing are growing in sophistication. But having the latest black box doesn't guarantee success. Issuers also need old-fashioned market savvy to get the lowest-cost funds. Here are the ones that combined both qualities over the past year