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Recent proposals from the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision have dismayed securitization bankers. They believe regulators are taking an unjustifiably punitive approach to the industry.

In early November credit protection on building materials group Hanson was trading at 95bp while some traders' debt equity models said the correct valuation was 160bp. Its shares held steady. That was the trigger that capital structure arbitrageurs were waiting for.

Bankers and investors putting on debt versus equity trades are drawing on the idea first expounded by Nobel economics laureate Robert Merton that equity can be thought of as a call option on the assets of a firm. If the share price dips below a certain level - implying a lower value on the firm's assets and cashflows relative to its liabilities - default will follow. Bondholders, meanwhile, have sold an equity put option to the issuer and the spread on a corporate bond is the premium for taking that position.

Russia

Securities firms are still debating a global settlement over equity research with New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer, the SEC and other US prosecutors seeking to avenge investors' losses. All the parties, though, seem to have lost sight of their true purpose. The changes proposed so far will neither restore faith in the system nor prevent future abuses. They are unworkable and thus irrelevant. Proposed reforms are targeted at the wrong level: at the institution not the individual.

Runner-up: Deutsche Bank

UBS Warburg allows only its top-tier clients to use CreditDelta, its portfolio analytics tool, and it's clear why. The site is a culmination of years of work and investment, combined with an excellent repository of historical data to easily create the best tool of its kind. This is not the kind of site that the bank would give access to just anyone who asked.

Runners-up: Goldman Sachs, CitiFX

Runner-up: Goldman Sachs

Runner-up Brown Brothers Harriman and Citibank

It's all about location. Or when dealing with Chinese clients it had better be from now on. Investment bankers can no longer ride roughshod over their sensitivities about feng shui and karma. It would appear that Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley made exactly this mistake while China Telecom was trying to list in November - much to their cost.

Household's spreads had widened to 800 basis points over Libor in the five-year bond and 1,000bp in the three-year in October, while its share price rose $6 to $26.