A few years ago I was at a talk with Scott McNeally of Sun Microsystems just after the Oscars in the US. He remarked how wonderful the Oscars were "A whole industry gathers to award prizes - to themselves."

Not for nothing is marketing the 'dark art'. 

I've worked at publications where a day before an awards ceremony when faced with no votes for 'best FX trading platform" just said "oh fuck it, who's our biggest advertiser." (true story).

In this current economy, off-the-shelf packages are becoming more popular for banks who for many years prefered to build in-house. Just view my interview with Lehman Brothers IT administrator, PwC's Isabelle Jenkins here.

The best way to judge a whether a software product is 'the best' is by asking users and not by looking at 'awards.'

Anyway, after writing about risk management for 16 years, any 'award' that give SunGard 'best risk management system' (what are we talking about here - credit, market, ops, systemtic?) should always be suspect - just ask any random risk manager worth his salt (if there are any left that haven't been 'let go' for suggessting that CDO might be a tad bit risky.)

Makes me think, maybe Finextra should resume its annual awards soon. Watch this space.