The cover story in this issue of Investor Relations focuses on the current takeover fever in the media industry; another article looks at career prospects for investor relations officers. Two quite separate subjects? Or do they bear some relation to each other?
Of course, takeovers can have an impact on an IRO’s career. After all, any crisis offers an opportunity for those involved to display their strategic and tactical prowess, as well as their ability to remain cool-headed and clear-thinking in the midst of mayhem. And if an investor relations executive is to move out of IR and onto better things within a company, it will not be as a result of performing the day-to-day IR tasks in a competent but pedestrian fashion.
More likely, it will be because they were prepared to hold out for a new corporate approach to dealing with the investment community; or because they managed to persuade senior management to alter their perceptions of the role of investor relations, convincing the CEO and others of the need to involve the IR function in the development of corporate strategy itself.
Showing a willingness to fight not just for their own corner but for what in their view are the best interests of a company will not lead to advancement in all cases, needless to say; indeed, if this approach fails, finding a new employer may be the only course of action left open. But increasingly the IR role is starting to be seen as an appropriate stopping-off point on the way up the mainstream corporate ladder, with the CFO position generally the most likely target destination.
In the meantime, corporate transactions – including spin-offs, mergers, takeovers and so on – do undoubtedly provide opportunities to shine. The irony, of course, is that in almost all cases a takeover will result in the loss of at least one IRO position; and in big mergers, involving big companies, whole departments may have to close. But in the broad sense, takeover waves of the kind currently being witnessed typically provide a boost to the investor relations industry. Takeovers tend to make companies more conscious of the role of IR, as CEOs panic at the possibility of losing their independence; and they make advisers to those companies both busier and richer.
