According to Euromoney, "the 350-person firm has a brokerage market share with foreign clients pegged at 16 per cent. In the primary market, it has led most of the large deals to come out of India, including the Rs 6-billion privatisation of Orissa Power Generation Corporation to strategic investor AES Corp of US." This divestment of OPGC was the first instance in India where the shares of a PSU has been put up for global bidding.

DSP Merrill Lynch chairman Hemendra Kothari said, "We are happy to have received this award of excellence during these testing times. It is a testimony to the quality of our team and we will continue to focus on improving service standards to our clients, be they issuers or investors."

The award gains importance in view of the fact that for the first time Euromoney has considered all parametersincluding the bank's broad-based capacity to raise capital, its role in advisory work, structuring and pricing of offerings and its strong research capablities. All awards under these categoroes have now been integrated into "Best Securites House in India".

DSP Merrill Lynch has also coordinated the Maharashtra State Road Developement Corporation's Rs 1170.81-crore debt issue, the largest-ever private placement for infrastructure projects in the country. The list of significant deals DSP Merrill Lynch successfully managed last year includes the Rs 450-crore bond offering for IPCL, the first book-building excercise on the Indian debt market with price discovery, and the Rs 600-crore debenture issue of Reliance Telecom. This deal was the largest infrastructure deal in the private sector and the lowest cost domestic debt financing by a start-up telecom project.