Market participants have endured a 12-month period of dramatic upheaval. Despite the challenges they faced, some companies managed not just to survive but to thrive – and helped clients to do so, too.
As the US debt ceiling talks laboured towards their eleventh-hour agreement last year, market participants quietly began to prepare for what would have been a catastrophic event: the country's default. At JP Morgan, the bank's risk managers and senior business leaders found themselves planning for events that seemed unthinkable just a few months earlier. The bank discussed how it would handle benefits cards through which banks offer credit that is repaid by the US government, for example, and drew up a script for branch and call centre staff to use when government employees tried to cash pay cheques.
It was that kind of year - old certainties vanished and doomsday scenarios felt very plausible. When 2011 began, many of this year's award winners would have been surprised to learn of decisions they would later take, or challenges they would face.
Visit Risk Magazine to see all the award winners for 2012