As the deal awards for 2003 wrap up among the various business publications, the Morgan Stanley co-led General Motors/General Motors Acceptance deal has garnered multiple accolades for innovation and complexity. The massive US$17.55bn financing raked in deal of the year awards from International Financince Review, Euromoney, Institutional Investor, Credit and The Banker .

"This was a landmark transaction in many ways: it was the biggest corporate financing in history, the biggest debt issuance ever and the biggest 30-year euro issue ever," wrote The Banker in their summary of GM/GMAC as the Best Corporate Bond Deal of 2003.

Aside from the size of the deal, the transaction represented the culmination of two years of integrated cash flow and pension analysis performed for GM by Morgan Stanley. The match of Morgan Stanley's capabilities to the client's needs leveraged the Firm's resources across business units and regions. The Firm's analysis and advice on pre-funding GM's pension plan offered a key differentiator from competing investment banks. Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch acted as lead bookrunners for the overall financing, with the Firm participating in seven of the 11 tranches.

In Institutional Investor's summary of notable deals in corporate finance, Sanjiv Khattri, assistant treasurer at GM commented on the complexity of the deal: "Anytime you can take such a significant pension obligation off the table with good terms, I'd call it innovative corporate financing."

The success of the high profile transaction boosted Morgan Stanley to the top spot for the 2003 International Financing Review award for USD Investment-Grade Corporate Bond House and also earned the Best High-Grade Bond Deal of 2003 in the Euromoney deals of the year awards.

At the time of pricing (June 26, 2003), records broken:

• largest single capital market financing event globally
• largest straight debt issue globally by a U.S. issuer
• largest 30-year euro issue
• largest single-tranche convertible debt offering
• second-largest convertible debt offering
• largest number of debt tranches (11)

In addition to the recognition of the GM/GMAC deal, Morgan Stanley-led deals appeared in various deal rankings. Download a pdf of deal awards and rankings received by Morgan Stanley.