The IFAonline financial Oscars

Oscar fever is everywhere today following the 82nd Academy Awards last night. Not to be outdone by Hollywood, we have compiled our own list of the winners and losers of the 2010 financial 'Oscars'.

BEST ACTOR

Winner: Hector Sants

Last year proved Sants' swan song after the FSA chief executive last month announced his resignation. The former banker is stepping down in the summer after a rocky ride as head of the regulator. He will be best remembered for taking the helm - rather unluckily it must be said - just as the financial meltdown really took hold. Oh, and for saying he wanted the financial services industry to be "very frightened" of the FSA.

BEST ACTRESS

Winner: Loretta Minghella

A 2009 Cranfield School of Management report revealed there were only 15 female executive directors in the top 100 UK companies, down from 16 in 2008, with the number of boards with more than one female director dropping from 39 to 37.

But not only is Loretta Minghella outgoing chief executive of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), she was also awarded the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Year's honours list for services to the financial services industry.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Winner: Lloyd Blankfein

OK, so technically Lloyd "I'm doing 'God's work" Blankfein did not write that now infamous line describing Goldman Sachs' role in the world. But he did say it, to a journalist.....he may as well have printed the pages it was written on.

BEST PICTURE

Winner: Britain

If a film/picture is a collaborative effort of many people, taken together, Britain gets this award for finally clawing its way out of its deepest recession since the 1930s in the fourth quarter of 2009. Celebrations on this winner might be a bit muted though - the UK was the last to come out of recession, after Germany, France, Japan and the US all returned to growth.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

The Red Knights

In case you haven't heard, the Red Knights are a group of City financiers and businessmen looking to wrest control of Manchester United from the Glazer family.
Since January, disgruntled Man Utd fans have adopted their club's original, Newton Heath colours - green and gold - as a way of protesting against Malcom Glazer's debt-happy ownership. The club's debt increased to £716.5m, accounts figures for January confirmed.

BEST DIRECTOR

Alistair Darling

In his December Pre-Budget Report, Darling unveiled a crowd-pleasing one-off tax on bank bonuses over £25,000, to be paid by the banks rather than individuals, which he said would raise £550m. Not so popular were reports of the infinite loopholes in the definitions of bonus and salary alone, making this an unenforceable tax.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Greek financial crisis

Stiff competition in this category. Prudential launching the world's biggest rights issue to finance its takeover of AIG's Asian assets in a "transformational" £23bn deal was a serious contender. As was old favourite Iceland, as 93% of the nation rejected a deal to pay back Britain for bailing out collapsed bank Icesave. Exotic Dubai World also came close. But no-one does tragedy like the Greeks, as last month the country teetered on becoming the first EU country to need bailing out by the other member states - at the risk of bring down the whole eurozone.