More than 200 capital markets professionals will convene next Wednesday evening, April 19, at the Edison Ballroom in New York City for the fifth-annual Markets Choice Awards.

Lifetime Achievement, Company of the Year, and Equity Trader of the Year are a few of the approximately 30 awards that will be handed out at the event, which is hosted by Markets Media and sister publication Traders Magazine.

There will be a special focus on individual awards this year, as about half of the awards will go to people rather than companies — this represents an increase of about threefold.

This year’s MCAs are expected to be as good or better than last year’s, which featured record buy-side participation. In 2016, Barbara Novick, vice chairman and co-founder of BlackRock, won the Lifetime Achievement award. Other featured winners were J.P. Morgan Asset Management for Best Buy-Side Equity Trading Desk; AB for Best Buy-Side Fixed Income Trading Desk; and FactSet-Portware for Best M&A Deal.

The MCAs span the most important sectors of institutional trading and investing — buy-side investors, traders and trading desks, sell-side execution desks, exchanges and trading platforms, traditional technology providers and emerging fintech firms.

The methodology in selecting nominees and then winners is simple yet thorough, and keeps the focus on the most important opinions: those of market participants.

The multi-month process began with a call for nominations from the readership of MarketsMedia.com. With this voluminous raw data as a starting point, editorial staff conducted research and telephone interviews and consulted with the MCA Advisory Board to winnow the field. From there, shortlists for many of the categories were published and reader votes were tallied as another input. Internal deliberations hammered out the final winners.

Other awards to be presented next week include Woman of the Year; CEO of the Year; multiple Rising Stars; Excellence in ETF Trading; and Best Buy-Side Trading Desks in Equities, Fixed Income and FX.